Supporting the troops, three words that show patriotism and caring for our soldiers
in harm’s way, and at times three words that are divisive.

President Bush says these three words all the time, Republicans and Democratic
politicians also use these three words while trying to show that they care about the troops and their families.

But was does it mean to “Support the Troops?”

If you are a citizen does it mean hanging a yellow magnet on the rear of your
car? Why do Republicans say they support the War, but when democrats say it, the republicans snicker?

Is patriotism partisan or bipartisan? Or is patriotism inherently American?

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was once asked by a soldier during
one of his speeches why soldiers are being sent to Iraq without any body armor, and Rumsfeld replied: “As you know,
you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Is that supporting the troops, sending them into battle without body armor?

Republicans, who controlled both the House and the Senate for the first six years
of Bush’s Presidency didn’t seem to mind. Even while extra money was allocated for more body armor, to this day,
troops are still being sent to Iraq without body armor. In fact many parents have been buying the armor themselves on web
sites such as eBay and sending the armor to their children in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

Back in March of this year President Bush had requested another $100 Billion
for his Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the democratically controlled House tacked on a few billion for the VA because in
Bush’s budget request earlier in the year, Bush had spending cuts scheduled for the VA’s budget for the years
2008 and 2009. The Whitehouse told Congress that if money was diverted to the VA, Bush would veto the bill, and he did.

Also earlier this year if you all recall, the Army Hospital, Walter Reed was
in the news because of the living conditions recovering wounded soldiers were forced to live in. The building and rooms were
infested with rats, leaky pipes and the conditions were unfit for humans. That certainly was no way to show our Support for
the Troops.

But how did that come about, Walter Reed Hospital is famous as a well run medical
facility.

Privatization, President Bush outsourced the support staff to a company called
IAP Worldwide Services; IAP cut the support staff from 300 to 50. The U.S. Army awarded a five-year, $120 million contract
in January 2006 to IAP Worldwide Services, and for every support staff cut, more money went to their bottom line.

President Bush likes to privatize services that were once done by government
employees to private companies who care more about their bottom lines then the service they are being paid to provide.

Oh, and the CEO of IAP Worldwide Services Al Neffgen, is a former senior Halliburton
official. And one other thing about IAP Worldwide Services before I move on, IAP was also one of the companies that were given
a contract by FEMA to deliver Ice to Katrina victims, and you know how well that went.

Back in April of this year, new Secretary of Defense Bill Gates, extended the
tours of duty for the military from 12 months to 15 months for those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Is that supporting the Troops?

In exchange for the extension, Gates said the service will be able to give all
units a year at home between deployments. But soldiers are not getting the year at home as promised most are getting 10 months
at the most.

Our troops are spread very thin, and many have said that we have reached the
breaking point, is that supporting the troops?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said "The Bush administration has failed to
create a plan to fully equip and train our troops, bring them home safely and soon, and provide our veterans with the quality
care they deserve," Pelosi went on to say, “Extending the tours of all active-duty Army personnel is an unacceptable
price for our troops and their families to pay."

Some of
the Support our troops have come to rely on by President Bush and the Republican Party include but are not limited to:

Outsourced medical support.

Slashed Funding for the VA

Extended tours in Iraq and Afghanistan form 12 to 15 months

Outsourced logistical support.

Armed forces Stretched to the Breaking Point

Troops sent to War with no Body Armor.

Troops sent to War with no Armor for Trucks or Humvees.

Politicizing the troops at every opportunity.

Because of the Walter Reed Scandal, Democrats created the “The Wounded
Warriors Assistance Act” a piece of legislation that establishes a hot line for medical patients to report problems
with any treatments, and to cut through the red tape for when the wounded move from the Pentagons care to the Veterans Administrations
care. At least that is what it was designed to do.

There are currently 400,000 wounded personnel waiting for their cases to be heard
that will determine the extent of permanent disability and monetary compensation the soldiers will receive. The Wounded Warriors
Assistance Act is supposed to assist in ridding the Military’s long waiting list. But President Bush has voiced concern
over one of the provisions that require imposing a one-year moratorium, on a program that lets private companies compete with
public agencies for military and hospital work contracts, private companies, such as IAP Worldwide Services.

When Bush says that he supports the troops, and gives speech after speech with
soldiers standing behind him as if they are his personal back drop, and while he is slashing the budget for the V.A., or sending
troops into battle without body armor, or awarding contracts to firms who only care about their bottom lines, maybe, just
maybe you will think twice, when he says, that he supports the troops.

Supporting the Troops, three words that have been so politicized, that the true
meaning of the words are lost in the rhetoric of politics.

David is a Vietnam Era Veteran, a Democratic
Party Activist, and David is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org

You can also read David’s
weekly column in the Santa Ynez Valley Journal or you can go to their web site: www.Syvjournal.com

<b>Y</b>oung and <b>O</b>ld <b>D</b>emocrats
of <b>A</b>merica

<a href=http://yodasworld.org>Yoda’s World</a>

YodasWorld.org

<a href=http://www.syvjournal.com/>Santa Ynez Valley Journal</a>

911 REMEMBERED:SIX YEARS LATER

By: David Phillips

September 17, 2007

This past Tuesday marked the sixth anniversary of the attacks by Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda
terror organization. The attacks killed 2,976 people in New York, The Pentagon, and in a field near Shanksville, Pa.

September 11, 2001 will be a day that is etched into the memories of all Americans. It will also
be remembered as the day that all American lives have changed, for better or worse.

On September 14, 2001 President Bush while standing atop part of the ruble that once was the
World Trade Center Towers said, "As we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens"... a male voice from the crowd that had
gathered around the rumble yells out, "President Bush, we can't hear you!" and Bush replied to the voice, “I can hear
you...I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you. And the people...And the people who knocked these buildings down will
hear all of us soon."

This was truly President Bush’s finest hour; his words galvanized a nation and most of
the free world. All of American was ready to stand with our President, and all were eager for retribution.

On September 20, 2001 President Bush Address’s a Joint Session of Congress and the American
People:

President Bush says, “In the normal course of events, Presidents come to this chamber to
report on the state of the Union.Tonight, no such report is needed.It has already been delivered by the American people.”

“We have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion.We have seen the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood,
the saying of prayers -- in English, Hebrew, and Arabic.We have seen the decency
of a loving and giving people who have made the grief of strangers their own.”

“My fellow citizens, for the last nine days, the entire world has seen for itself the state
of our Union -- and it is strong.”

“Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom.Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution.Whether
we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done. “

Again President Bush looks strong and provides guidance and leadership, while receiving applause
from a United Congress. Those that were in attendance and all who watched his address on TV that night, were united, there
were no Democrats, there were no Republicans there were only Americans.

During this address President Bush goes on to say that it was al-Qaeda and it’s leader
Osama Bin Laden who were responsible for the attacks and that they were located in Afghanistan and protected by the Taliban
who had taken control of the country.

Americans were ready, we knew who attacked us, and we knew where to find them. President Bush
gave the Taliban the opportunity to turn Bin Laden over to us to avoid a full scale attack. The Taliban refused to turn over
Bin Laden and any of his al-Qaeda group, and so we gathered our forces and when all the pieces were in place we attacked,
we went into Afghanistan and we were not going to stop until we had captured or killed Osama Bin Laden and all of his al-Qaeda
organization.

Or so we thought.

In December 2001 our forces had Osama Bin Laden
cornered in the Tora Bora mountain range between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then out of the clear blue sky, President Bush
recalls most of our troops, tells them to pack up their bags, because we are going to Iraq.

“The most important thing is for us to find Osama Bin Laden. It is our number one priority
and we will not rest until we find him.” George W. Bush September 13, 2001

“I don't know where he is. I have no idea and it's not that important. It's not our priority.”
George W. Bush March 13, 2002

Why the sudden change in just six months?

Iraq, a country that had NOTHING to do with the attacks on 911. A country that was neutered with
U.S. forces controlling both the Northern and Southern borders with a No Fly Zone, ever since Bush Sr. kicked Iraq out of
Kuwait in 1991.

President George W. Bush said that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States because he
had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD’s). Well, we later learned that that was not the case, and about every six months
Bush gives a different reason for his folly into Iraq. Bush has tried to link Iraq to the September 11, 2001 attacks here,
and at one point 79% of the country in a Gallup poll said that they thought Saddam was responsible for 911.

Bush eventually went on record saying that Saddam had nothing to do with the attacks here in
the United States. But Bush still tries to link the two together in almost every speech. The CIA and the Pentagon are both
on record saying that there were no al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq prior to our invasion.

But now al-Qaeda is in Iraq because of Bush’s folly and he’s again is trying to link
the al-Qaeda that is now in Iraq because of his war, to the al-Qaeda that attacked us on 911.

And because of the so-called War on Terror, we here in the United States have seen many of our
civil liberties erode. Such as:

·We
can now legally torture people

·We
can now legally kidnap people

·We
can now legally have secret prisons

·We
can now legally wiretap without warrants

·We
can now legally search homes and businesses without warrants

·We
can now legally data mine E-Mails without warrants

·We
can now legally open and read US Mail without warrants

·We
can now legally track financial records without warrants

·We
can now legally read someone’s health records without warrants

·We
can now legally data mine millions of telephone records without warrants

All of these are now legal: some through the Patriot Act, some through the Military Commissions
Act, and others by Bush declaring he has the right through Executive Privilege (which he does not).

So while September 11, 2001 will be etched into our minds forever, the actions by our government
that followed will also have a lasting effect on every American for years to come. For better or worse.

David Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran,
a Democratic Party Activist, and David is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org

You can also read David’s weekly column in the Santa Ynez Valley
Journal or you can go to their web site: www.Syvjournal.com

Gen. Petraeus to
testify before Congress THIS week

By:
David Phillips

September 10, 2007

On the 15th of September, Gen. David Petraeus will go before Congress to give his
assessment on the Surge of troops in Iraq that President Bush announced back in January.

The reasoning Bush used for the Surge was to give the al-Maliki led government some breathing
room from hostility to institute benchmarks demanded by Congress, most of which were laid out in the Iraq Study Group report
from last November.

Progress on those benchmarks has been slow, real slow, and the August recess of the Iraqi
parliament did not help the situation.

There are eighteen benchmarks that were to be used as a measure to show what progress the
Surge has accomplished.

The General Accountability Office (GAO) a non-partisan investigative arm of Congress charged
with examining matters relating to the receipt and payment of public funds, gave their report to Congress this week regarding
the eighteen benchmarks and concluded that the Iraqi government has failed to meet 15 of the 18 benchmarks established by
Congress in conjunction with the authorization of President Bush’s troop surge in January.

The report concluded that the Iraqi government has fully met only three of the legislative,
security, and economic benchmarks. The GAO concluded that four other benchmarks have been partially met, and the rest had
not been met.

“Overall, key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear
whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds. These results do not diminish the courageous
efforts of coalition forces,” the report said.

Only one of eight legislative benchmarks was met. The rights of minority political parties
are protected. One other benchmark was partially met. Legislation was passed on the creation and implementation of regions.
However, this law will not be enacted until 2008.

Iraqi security was one of the target goals Congress had asked for, and the report said, “Iraq’s
government has established various committees in support of the Baghdad security plan and established almost all of the planned
Joint Security Stations in Baghdad. The government has partially met the benchmarks of providing three trained and ready brigades
for Baghdad operations and eliminating safe havens for outlawed groups.”

Other Iraqi security measures were not met they include:

·Eliminating militia control of
local security

·Eliminating political interventions
in military operations

·Ensured evenhanded enforcement
of the laws

·Increasing the military’s
ability to operate independently

The Iraqi government has allocated and spent $1.5 billion of the $10 billion they were given
for reconstruction (this does not include the $9 Billion that has gone missing), which is the only economic benchmark that
has partially been met.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said of the GAO report, “The independent GAO
report released today contrasts sharply with President Bush’s stay-the-course Iraq. The GAO report is the latest in
a series of assessments to conclude that the Iraqi government has failed to meet nearly every political, economic and security
benchmark laid out by President Bush himself in January.”

Well now you have a general idea of what the report said, I say general idea because the report
is over a hundred pages. But I think you have the major facts.

This brings us back to September 15th and the report General David Petraeus will be giving
to Congress. Ryan Crocker the U.S. ambassador for Iraq will also be giving his assessments on the same date.

But what will be said, and whose words will be coming out of the General and the Ambassadors
mouth?

You would think that since these two have an extensive expertise on the subject since Petraeus
and Crocker are running the show, so to speak, in Iraq. But that is not the case.

Last month the Whitehouse announced that the reports to be given by both Petraeus and Crocker
will be written by Whitehouse personnel. That’s right, the Whitehouse will be writing the report that will be given
to Congress and shown to the Nation.

For months now, we have all been hearing the White House responded to questions about Iraq
the same way: let’s wait until September and see what Petraeus and Crocker have to say.

Hell, they have known for months what will be said because they are writing the reports that
Petraeus and Crocker will be spewing, and all the while they have been lying to America and the entire world, like they have
been doing since Bush started his folly into Iraq.

So when Petraeus and Crocker give their reports they both will be lacking any credibility.
Their much-ballyhooed September report will have their names on it, but will have been written by who knows who in the Bush
administration, which has lost all standing with the majority of the American people.

This past Labor Day weekend President Bush made an impromptu visit to Iraq while on his way
to Australia, where he gave a speech and led the troops to believe that in the near future some troops might be able to come
home.

Bush told the troops that any cut would depend on the security situation in Iraq. After Bush
met with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, Bush said they” tell me if the kind of success we are now seeing continues,
it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces.”

Bush put emphasis on the word "if" and he didn't say how many troops could be withdrawn, or
when.

But once Bush was back on Air Force One and on his way to Australia, he changed his tune while
talking to reporters.

Bush said, “If you look at my comments over the past eight months, it’s gone from
a security situation in the sense that we’re either going to get out and there will be chaos, or MORE troops,”
he said. “Now the situation has changes where I’m able to speculate on the hypothetical.”

Lives are being lost every day, and he wants to speculate on the hypothetical. Sounds like
more hogwash.

Bush said, “My Message to Maliki is: ‘You’ve got a lot of work to do, and
whatever decision is made in Washington D.C., is all aimed at helping you achieve what is necessary to get the work done.’”

Mr. President, the same goes for you too.

The White house wrote the report that Petraeus and Crocker will be giving on September 15th.
How on earth, can anyone believe anything that the Bush administration says?

Bush said on several occasions that the withdrawal of troops from Iraq will be left up to
the next President and this is the only that he has ever said about his Wars that I do believe.

David Phillips is a Vietnam
Era Veteran, a Democratic Party Activist, and David is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org

You can also
read David’s weekly column in the Santa Ynez Valley Journal or you can go to their web site: www.Syvjournal.com

Unions:
Are They Still Necessary?

By: David Phillips

September 3, 2007

Over the last 100 years or so, Unions have changed the
way workers are treated in almost every industry in the United States. Unions have given us child labor laws, higher wages,
health care, sick leave, vacations, and dozens and dozens of other benefits, that the average worker today takes for granted.

For decades Republicans have shown their disdain for Unions
and middle class working American’s, while supporting the corporations who give them campaign money.

Former President
Ronald Reagan, who never met a labor union he did NOT want to break up, was one of the most anti-labor Presidents in our history.
Republican presidents never have had much regard for unions, which almost always vote Democrat.

Reagan's war on labor began in the summer of 1981, when
he fired 13,000 striking air traffic controllers and destroyed their union. As Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson noted,
that was "an unambiguous signal that employers need feel little or no obligation to their workers, and employers got that
message loud and clear -- illegally firing workers who sought to unionize, replacing permanent employees who could collect
benefits with temps who could not, shipping factories and jobs abroad."

President Reagan's Republican predecessors treated union
leaders much as they treated Democratic members of Congress -- as people to be fought with at times, but also as people to
be bargained with at other times. But Reagan engaged in precious little bargaining. He waged almost continuous war against
organized labor.

And Reagan’s war on Unions and middle class America
continues today. President Bush has completely embraced corporations and their campaign contributions. President Bush even
tells us that illegal aliens are good for our economy because they do the jobs American citizens will not.

Those construction jobs and those tech jobs and all those
other jobs that American workers have been doing for decades, are now being done by those illegal aliens who work for sub
standard wages, with little or no benefits because the American Union workers who use to do those jobs have been fired, and
the Unions disbanded, in favor of those illegal alien workers who will do the jobs that American workers will not do, according
to President Bush.

Corporations are getting richer with cheap labor because
unions have been busted, and middle class Americans, according to President Bush have lost their jobs to illegal aliens because
the Americans, who were doing those jobs, are no longer willing to do those jobs.

Americans in their thirties are earning less today than
their fathers did in the 70’s. The study was produced by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Enterprise Institute,
the Brookings Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Urban Institute. It looked at income levels of American men in their
30s, which can be a good indicator of lifetime income.

Census Bureau figures, and the study's authors found that
after adjusting for inflation, men in their 30s in 2004 had a median income of about $35,000 per year, for a 12 percent drop
compared with $40,000 per year for men in the same age group in 1974.

This study is a clear indication that the Republican Union
Busting the last few decades has had a clear impact on the American middle class.

For millions of working people, the American Dream is now
a remnant of days gone by, something your parents and grandparents believed in and maybe even experienced. One of the reasons
for the loss of the dream has been the decline of union jobs in America.

Unions and working people, not Corporate America, fought
for the eight-hour work day, unemployment insurance, Social Security, the minimum wage, paid overtime, Medicare, safety and
health laws, family leave, and a fairer share of the nation's wealth.

Unions give workers the collective power to negotiate with
employers to win better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Unions also help working people gain a louder voice in politics
and fight for their rights.

On average, union workers earn 25% more than non-union
workers and are 22% more likely to have employer-paid health benefits, according to the AFL-CIO.

Less than 10% of the American work force today is represented
by a Union, and corporate American is laughing all the way to the bank. In fact, in the eyes of many employers, this rate
is still too high. By comparison, one out of three American workers in the mid-1950’s was represented by a union.

Employers know that unions are effective. That's why they
illegally fire and harass workers each year for supporting a union. When a company fires one worker for supporting a union,
it can have a disturbing effect on the rest the work force, which is the ultimate goal of such harassment.

Since labor laws were first enacted in 1935 establishing
the right of workers to form unions, businesses in America have waged a non-stop campaign to weaken the laws. Rather than
respect the right to join a union, employers hire anti-union lawyers and do whatever it takes to keep employees from organizing.
And sadly, the courts and government agencies that are supposed to enforce the laws too often favor the interests of employers
over workers.

For years now, our elected officials on the right side
of the aisle have been whittling away at unions, to increase the profits of corporate America. The republican base while supporting
these tactics, have inadvertently lowered their own wages and benefits because their political leaders convinced them that
Unions are bad for America.

Unions have brought about great change that has benefitted
each and every American, and now we have a Republican President who has convinced the same republican base, that bringing
in foreign labor to do the jobs that Americans won’t (because the wages have been slashed and no benefits are offered)
is a good thing.

If a Republican repeats a lie often enough, the Sheeple
will follow…

David
Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran, a Democratic Party Activist, and David is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political
magazine YodasWorld.org

You
can also read David’s weekly column in the Santa Ynez Valley Journal or you can go to their web site: www.Syvjournal.com

GUN CONTROL

By:
David Phillips

August 27, 2007

Second Amendment of our Constitution

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the
right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

This
is the part of our Constitution that says a citizen of the United States can own a gun, or at least that is what the National
Rifle Association (NRA) has always said.

The
NRA and its powerful lobby organization in Washington have made sure that every Republican politician also believes that every
citizen can own a gun.

But
the NRA and right wing gun nuts, also feel that ANY type of gun should be available to every citizen.

A
few months back, there was a terrible shooting at Virginia Tech College, were thirty three people were killed. The shooter
we are told had some mental disorders, and never should have had access to any guns.

Background
checks vary from State to State, and in Virginia names of mental patients were never checked. Congress quickly passed Legislation
that is supposed to make it easier to check into the mental status of a gun buyer.

The
NRA recently argued that suspected terrorists should be allowed to buy guns because they have not been proven to be terrorists.
They used this same logic for mental patients, saying that until someone is proven to have some mental disorder, he or she
has the right to buy and own guns.

So according to the NRA, everyone can own guns, Yee Haw.

And
the NRA says all guns are fair game. Everything from hand guns, machine hand guns, to military M-16’s, AK-47’s,
UZI’s and even long range sniper rifles, can be owned. The only thing that is illegal are automatic weapons, meaning
the gun keeps firing as long as the trigger is held down. Semi-automatic is legal, meaning the trigger must be pulled each
time a bullet is fired.

Moral arguments why the 2nd is not absolute

First,
it important to note that no right is absolute, even those supposedly granted by God and guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
For example, even though the 1st Amendment guarantees me the right to free speech, the right is limited. I cannot publish
a newspaper in which I claim that a certain public figure, for example the president of a major company, is a cocaine user,
if that fact is known to me to be completely untrue. It would be called libel, and it is a valid abridgment of my rights.
The classic example of an abridgment of freedom of speech is the imminent danger rule: I cannot stand up in a crowded theatre
and scream that there is a fire (if there is not), because the ensuing panic may cause injury.

The
reason abridgment of rights is sometimes valid is that rights can very easily clash. In the example above, my right to free
speech clashes with the people in theatre's rights to not be trampled. The same analysis can be applied to the 2nd Amendment.
If the right to own a gun interferes with public safety, that right can morally be abridged, in order to protect public safety.
And the courts have agreed with this position, as follows.

Legal arguments why the 2nd is not absolute

Throughout
the history of the USA, many Court decisions have limited the right to keep and bear arms. The Miller case in the early 20th
century limited the right to own certain classes of weapons. More recently, we have the following from the United States Court
of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, which indicates that the clause about "a well regulated militia" does not mean that the average
citizen is part of that militia: "Since the Second Amendment right 'to keep and bear arms' applies only to the right of the
state to maintain a militia, and not to the individual's right to bear arms, there can be no serious claim to any express
constitutional right of an individual to possess a firearm." (Stevens v. U.S., United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit,
1971).

A
similar ruling from the Seventh Circuit held that "Construing [the language of the Second Amendment] according to its plain
meaning, it seems clear that the right to bear arms is inextricably connected to the preservation of a militia . . . We conclude
that the right to keep and bear handguns is not guaranteed by the Second Amendment." (Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove,
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, 1982).

As
you can see there is a strong case proving that the 2nd Amendment does NOT guarantee every citizen the right to
own guns. I personally believe that limited gun ownership should be legal, but I think that there must be limits on the types
of guns that citizens can own.

FIREARM
FACTS-Gunsin the United States - Easy Access to Deadly Weapons

There are approximately 192 million privately owned firearms in the U.S. - 65 million of which are handguns.

Currently, an estimated 39% of households have a gun, while 24% have a handgun.

In 1998 alone, licensed firearms dealers sold an estimated 4.4 million guns, 1.7 million of which were handguns.
Additionally, it is estimated that 1 to 3 million guns change. hands in the secondary market each year, and many of these
sales are not regulated.

Gun
Deaths and Injury - The UnitedStates Leads the World in Firearm Violence

In 2004, 29,569 people in the United States died from firearm-related deaths – 11,624 (39%) of those were
murdered; 16,750 (57%) were suicides; 649 (2.2%) were accidents; and in 235 (.8%) the intent was unknown.In comparison, 33,651 Americans were killed in the Korean War and 58,193 Americans were killed in the Vietnam
War.

For every firearm fatality in the United States in 2005, there were estimated to be more than two non-fatal
firearm injuries.

In 2004, firearms were used to murder 56 people in Australia, 184 people in Canada, 73 people in England and
Wales, 5 people in New Zealand, and 37 people in Sweden.

In comparison, firearms were used to murder 11,344 people in the United States.

Source:
US Department of the Treasury. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Source:
Centers for Disease Control

Source:
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Source:
Center for Electronic Records. National Archives

Common sense arguments

When
our Constitution was written people used guns for hunting food, as well as protection. Today people buy their food and no
longer hunt for food (at least most do not). Unfortunately there is still a need for protection, but machine guns are offensive
weapons, meant for just one thing, and that is to kill.

The
bottom line is not everyone should be allowed to buy a gun just because they live here and not every gun should be for sale.

I
wonder if I can own a Tank…

David Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran, a Democratic Party Activist,
and David is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org

"If parents don't have options besides public schools, there is no accountability.Accountability without consequences means nothing….The system needs to be shaken up."President George W.Bush

What is a school voucher?

A school voucher, also called an education voucher, it is a certificate by which parents are given the ability
to pay for the education of their children at a school of their choice, rather than the public school to which they were assigned.

So if the public school to which a child happens to be assigned has very low ratings or might be in the inner
city and run down, a school voucher would give the child the same chance of a quality education in a private school as the
rich kids whose parents can afford the school.

The idea is to give the opportunity for a quality education to all who want the chance.

·Parents that are rich enough have a choice
of schools for their kids; Parents, who are not rich enough, do not have the same choices.

·Private schools offer better competition
between students as well as between other schools.

·Private schools have better teachers
as well as a more diverse curriculum.

·Providing private school access to everyone
will increase diversity.

·There are basically two types of private
schools, Religious and Non-Religious

Sounds like a great idea, a good school for all who wish to attend, so where is the down side, this sounds too
good to be true.

Why are people against this?

·Most of the schools in the voucher program
are religious; government funding violates the 1st Amendment separation of church and state.

·Vouchers take funds away from already
underfunded public schools.

·Private schools aren't accountable to
any oversight organization; thus, they may not act responsibly.

·Public schools must accept everyone regardless
of disabilities, test scores, religion, or other characteristics; private schools can show favoritism or discrimination in
selecting students.

Over ninety five percent of all school vouchers go to religious schools. The Establishment clause of the 1st
Amendment was put in specifically by the framers to avoid the abuse that inevitably comes with state-sponsored religious education.

The school voucher system makes bad schools even worse. By taking away money meant for public schools and diverting
the money into school vouchers, the public schools cannot keep up with the cost of teachers, books, computers, after school
programs, security, maintenance, etc. So the public schools that need the money the most are losing when we subsidize private
schools.

Private schools have very little or no government oversight so we don't know how well private schools will perform.Public schools are subject to government oversight and more rules & regulation.
Thus, tighter control is placed on the teaching methods and system of education.

The public school system in this country varies depending on where you live. If you live in the Suburbs chances
are you will be going to a better school than those that live in inner cities. But regardless of where you live, ALL public
schools accept all students, regardless of what challenges they present.

Private schools on the other hand can institute ANY criteria they want for choosing or refusing students. Thus,
they can discriminate or make eligibility standards much more difficult for poorer students.

“No Child Left Behind “is part of the problem

In 2001, right after 911, Congress passed “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB), which has turned into a
miserable failure. According to the Department of Education over one million students dropped out of High School in 2006.

The NCLB act requires schools to teach kids to pass standardized tests, schools and their school districts are
required to pass a certain percentage in order to maintain their federal support. Our schools have gone from teaching our
kids with a much diversified curriculum, to teaching kids in a very narrow course outline, only to pass a standardized test.

The Department of Education estimates that more than 7000 students per day are dropping out of High School this
year.

There is no school voucher program anywhere in our country that can stop all these kids from dropping out. We
need to invest our tax dollars on public schools not private schools. Our public schools need better teachers with higher
salaries and all must be held accountable for the jobs they do.

Education is the Silver Bullet for many of our countries woes

Communities that have solid educational systems reap many benefits for their efforts. Many graduates stay in
the community and become very productive citizens. Those with a good education put back into the community, making the community
stronger. Those that graduate high school and continue on with their educations, often return back to their towns and cities,
and become your future Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, and Businessmen and women.

Communities with better educated people see less crime.Justice
Department data shows that seventy five percent of all prison inmates (2.4 million inmates) in the United States, lack a complete
high school education.

High school graduates make more than a quarter of a million dollars more, over their lifetime, compared to those
who do not graduate high school. Source the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Cure for many of America’s woes can be found in the public school system. There are many changes that
need to take place in the public school system, and change requires money, tax dollars, and change is hard; teachers need
to be held accountable for the jobs they perform. Those that fail the kids they teach year after year need to be made to do
their jobs properly through refresher courses on teaching.

Government funds should be kept with the public school systems that take on these challenges rather than private
schools that may discriminate. There is not enough space in private schools to offer every parent the choice of public or
private, and not everyone wants to attend a private religious school.

In the end it becomes obvious that our tax dollars for education should focus on the public school system, the
school voucher system is a boondoggle, and in several states, including Florida, the courts have denied school vouchers because
of the Separation of Church and State.

In short, vouchers will force taxpayers to support two entire education systems -- public and private. To make
things worse, no extra money will be funneled to those schools that desperately need taxpayer support.

David Phillips is
a Vietnam Era Veteran, a Democratic Party Activist, and David is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine
YodasWorld.org

Should President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney be impeached?The short answer is yes. The long answer is also yes, but needs further explaining, which I will provide.

But first a little background on the Impeachment process

Removing an official from office requires two steps: (1) a formal accusation, or impeachment,
by the House of Representatives, and (2) a trial and conviction by the Senate. Impeachment requires a majority vote of the
House; conviction is more difficult, requiring a two-thirds vote by the Senate. The vice president presides over the Senate
proceedings in the case of all officials except the president, whose trial is presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme
Court. This is because the vice president can hardly be considered a disinterested party—if his or her boss is forced
out of office he or she is next in line for the top job!

High crimes and misdemeanors is a phrase from the United States Constitution, Article II, Section
4: "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment
for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

"High" in the legal parlance of the 18th century means "against the State". A high crime is one
which seeks the overthrow of the country, which gives aid or comfort to its enemies, or which injures the country to the profit
of an individual or group (Halliburton). In democracies and similar societies it also includes crimes which attempt to alter
the outcome of elections.

OK, so now you know what it takes to Impeach Bush and Cheney, but there is one Key element missing
from the above description and that element is a Spine, or a Back-Bone from the Democratic Party in Congress.

Bush’s Folly into Iraq

We know that Cheney was cherry picking Intel, then twisting it to fit the Whitehouse claims of
a nuclear program in Iraq. We know that Bush Lied in his 2003 State of the Union speech by saying that Saddam Hussein bought
Yellow Cake (Uranium) from Niger, and he knew that the Intel for his Niger claim was false.

Lies: Bush insisted
that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but his "evidence" consisted mostly of forged documents, plagiarized student
papers, and vague satellite photos. The United Nations was on the ground in Iraq and could find nothing. After extensive searches
Bush was finally forced to admit that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

Lies: Bush, Cheney, Rice and Powell said that aluminum tubes
Iraq attempted to purchase were for use in a uranium centrifuge to create nuclear weapons. These were the only physical evidence
he had against Iraq. But it turns out this evidence had been rejected by the Department of Energy and other intelligence agencies
long before Bush used them in his speeches

Lies: Bush led people to believe that Iraq was involved
with 9/11 by repeatedly linking them in his speeches. This was so effective that at one point 70% of Americans actually believed
Saddam was behind 9/11. Bush has since admitted that this was not true.

Lies: Bush has stated that Congress had access to all the
same information that the White House had. Thus he should not be blamed for making the mistake of going to war. But Bush was
briefed many times about the falsehood of various stories and this information never reached Congress.

Before the start of the War, the Whitehouse said the War in Iraq would only cost the American
Tax payer 1.5 Billion dollars, and that the Iraqi Oil would pay for the Reconstruction in Iraq.

Dick Cheney, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Richard Armitage and Karl Rove all conspired
to leak the name of a Covert CIA agent. All four of these men should be tried for Treason.

Bush’s Support for the Troops:

He sent the troops to War, with no Body Armor.

He sent the troops to War with no Armor for Trucks or Humvees.

He has outsourced logistical support.

He has outsourced medical support.

He has slashed Funding for the VA while giving speeches with our troops as back-drops.

He has proposed VA cuts for 2009 and 2010 in his latest budget proposal.

He has extended tours in Iraq and Afghanistan form 12 to 18 months.

He has stretched the Armed forces to the Breaking Point.

He has politicized the troops at every opportunity.

The Katrina Fiasco

Here is another example of the ineffectual leadership from Bush and Cheney, and because of their
direction, thousands suffered needlessly. And thousands are still displaced because Insurance companies were allowed to only
pay 10 cents on the dollar if they paid at all.

Here’s a little trivia for you, a company called IAP Worldwide Services was contracted
to supply water and Ice to Katrina victims. IAP Worldwide Service is also the company that Bush contracted to privatize the
support staff at Walter Reed Hospital. IAP slashed the support staff from its original 300 employees down to 50.

American Civil Liberties

·Telephone Wiretaps: Bush and Cheney have been wiretapping American citizens without Warrants.

·E-Mail: The NSA has been data mining E-Mails from millions of Americans, without a Warrant.

·Mail: President Bush has said that he has the right to read the mail of American citizens, without
Warrants.

·Financial Records: Bush and Cheney have data mined the financial records of millions of Americans without Warrants.

·Medical Records: The NSA has built a data base using the medical records of millions of American citizens, without
a Warrant.

·Data Mining: The NSA and the Pentagon have been building a database on every American, all without Warrants.

Under the cover of a Bill called “The Military Commissions Act”, Bush has authorized
Kidnappings by the CIA, called “Extraordinary Rendition.” Bush has suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus; and Bush
has authorized “Secret Prisons”, as well as “Torture”.

Under the incompetent leadership of Bush and Cheney we now have the Largest Deficit in the History
of our country. These two have also given us the Largest Trade Deficit in the History of our Country.

Bush has been in office about six and a half years, and he has been very ineffective in almost
all of his decisions, I only wish I had more space to list them. But I have given you several examples where Bush and Cheney
have misused their power, or just flat out lied.

Should they both be impeached?Hell yes…

David Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran,
a Democratic Party Activist, and David is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org

A few years ago the European Union (EU) which consists of several countries who for the most
part have their own languages, decided that all business that is conducted to benefit the EU as a whole, will do so in English.

The EU has made English the Official language for business. Imagine a group of countries where
each has their own language, have banded together to make English the Official language for Business.

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt stated, "We have
room for but one language in this country, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns
our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house."

So why is there so much resistance to make English the Official language here in the United States?

I know that in my many years in business, as long as the money was green it didn’t matter
to me what language someone spoke, all though at times it was difficult to communicate.

I also know from my many years that those that wanted to do business with me, would find it easier
on themselvesif they understood me, and if they did not, it was usually they
who lost out on my business, because I would simply seek out someone who did understand me.

So who is the one losing out, the person who speaks
English, or the person who does not?

It is obvious that those that wish to live here in the United States hurt themselves and their
families if they do not speak English. Immigrants that speak English will succeed a lot easier than those that don’t.

But there is a push here in the United States to make English the Official language.

Recently the Immigration Bill died on the Senate floor, a section of that Bill would have required
those that were given Amnesty, to eventually learn to speak English. This was a pie in the sky attempt to placate those that
have been pushing for English only here in the United States.

Currently English is our National language, but not our Official language.

So what are some of the consequences if English were
made our Official language?

If English becomes the Official language here in the United States all official forms and documents
would only be printed in English.

Forms like DMV manuals and tests, voting ballots, hospital forms, court documents, or any other
document that’s printed by the Federal Government, or State agencies.

The English only rule would also remove all government interpreters in hospitals or in our courts,
and any other public service that may require an interpreter.

A Republican Presidential candidate for 2008, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) recently said in a debate
that English should and must be made the Official language, and he went on to say that when people are no longer told on the
phone to Press 1 for English, thenhe has done his job.

I personally don’t have a problem pressing 1 for English, it’s all the other numbers
I am told to press to get to this or that department or person that pisses me off, and then after doing all that I may either
be told to press a number to get back to the main menu, or I am told to wait for the next available operator.

I also want those that are driving on our roads to understand our rules and to be able to understand
our road signs. And if it takes printing a drivers manual in another language or 100 languages, I’m all for it.

If someone has received their citizenship and wish’s to take part in our democratic elections,
I would hope that they have learned enough English to understand the voting ballots, but if it is easier for them to read
in their native language so what. If I were a politician, I would want my constituents to vote for me in whatever language
is easiest for them.

As for hospitals, if a foreign language form or an interpreter will move things along smoother
and more efficiently, it would seem to make more sense. More sense for the patient that is about to be seen and for the patients
that will follow.

So if we make English the Official language will everyone who does not speak English take English
lessons?When I call a business will they no longer say Press 1 for English?I know that if I am a business owner I will still do business in any language; and
my phone would still say Press 1 for English.

Many U.S. towns and cities along our southern border with Mexico, are now accepting Mexican currency
for their services or products. This is also true along our northern border with Canada and Canadian currency.

It seems that these businesses have evolved to the point where they say that it doesn’t
matter what language or what color you or your money is, we will gladly accept you’re trade.

Rep Tancredo says that his job will be done once English has been made the Official Language.
It seems to me, that those who are pushing for English to become the Official language would only be hurting themselves and
everyone else if this happens.

Young children pick up foreign languages much easier than adults.Men and women in their 30’s, 40’s and on up, will certainly find learning English, or any other language
that is not native to them difficult, not impossible, but certainly not as easy as their children.

We are becoming a true global world with business and trade and the needs for people to speak
more than one language have never been greater. When Roosevelt made his quote in 1906 his words had a spoke to a different
era.

Mexico is currently building a seaport in order to off load ships that normally are off loaded
here in the United States. A Super Highway (using current U.S. and Canadian Highways) is being built that will move these
containers throughout the United States and into parts of Canada from the seaport. This is part of NAFTA (North American Free
Trade Agreement) between the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

I guess the point I am trying to make here, is that in this Globalization, we will continue see
men and women from other countries wanting to come here to make a better life for themselves and their families.

Those that speak English will have an advantage over those that do not. But they will continue
to come and to prevent them from learning about our laws and customs because we have English as our Official language, is
narrow minded, and puts everyone in danger.

David Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran, a Democratic Party Activist, and
David is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org E-Mail Questions or Comments: oneyoda@aol.com

You can also read David’s
Political Opinions in the Santa Ynez Valley Journal or their web site:

A
pardon is legal forgiveness for a crime, removing guilt and punishment. The president's right to issue pardons in federal
cases is spelled out in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which describes the "Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons
for Offenses against the United States, except in cases of Impeachment." A president has wide discretion to use the pardon,
and it is not subject to congressional approval. The one exception: Pardons may not be used to halt impeachment proceedings.
The framers of the Constitution intended the pardon power to be used to preserve "the tranquility of the commonwealth."

Unlike
commutation, a pardon may be granted at any time before or after trial and conviction. A person who is granted a pardon returns
to the legal status he held prior to the crime, may vote, and may hold a passport. Some states, however, prohibit pardoned
people from some activities, such as holding local office.

Here is an account of pardons and commutations using figures from the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ)
going back to the year 1945, and starting with Harry S. Truman. The USDOJ also has the figures for how many were denied pardons
and commutations and everything is broken down by year. Their web site is http://www.usdoj.gov/pardon/actions_administration.htm if you would like to see a more detailed breakdown.

·Harry S. Truman (93 mos.)Pardons 1913 Commutations 118

·Dwight D. Eisenhower (96 mos.) Pardons 1110 Commutations
47

·John F. Kennedy (34 mos.) Pardons 472 Commutations 100

·Lyndon B. Johnson (62 mos.) Pardons 960 Commutations
226

·Richard M. Nixon (67 mos.) Pardons 863 Commutations
60

·Gerald E. Ford (29 mos.) Pardons 382 Commutations 22

·Jimmy Carter (48 mos.) Pardons 534 Commutations 29

·Ronald Reagan (96 mos.) Pardons 393 Commutations 13

·George H.W. Bush (48 mos.) Pardons 74 Commutations 3

·William J. Clinton (96 mos.) Pardons 396 Commutation
61

·George W. Bush ( as of today) Pardons 113Commutations 4

A
couple of weeks ago President Bush commuted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence. Bush said he agreed
with the jury and their verdict, but Bush said he felt that the thirty month prison term was too much, so he removed the prison
time, but left in place the four guilty verdicts and a $250,000 fine.

The
thirty month prison term is the going sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice. Bush said, "I made a judgment, a considered
judgment, that I believe was the right decision to make in this case, and I stand by it."

You
would think that since Bush said the verdict was right, that some prison time was appropriate, but not even ONE day was warranted
in President Bush’s mind.

There
are currently 3000 people in prison for the same crimes; will President Bush commute all their sentences? After all Bush said
that the sentence does not fit the crime.

The other day President Bush when asked by a reporter if he may pardon Libby in the future, Bush said, "As to
the future, I rule nothing in and nothing out."

Scooter Libby’s
verdict culminated a nearly four-year investigation into how CIA official Valerie Plame's name was leaked to reporters in
2003. The trial revealed that top members of the administration were eager to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador
Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq.

In President Bush’s
2003 State of the Union speech, Bush said then, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Director of the CIA
George Tenet said that they could not confirm the report, but the Whitehouse inserted these words in the 2003 State of the
Union speech anyway against the wishes of Tenet.

Ambassador Wilson found
no evidence to support the Whitehouse claim and later wrote a story for the NY Times about his findings, after which the Whitehouse
leaked Valerie Plame’s name to the newspapers.

Eight days after Wilson's
account appeared in The New York Times, syndicated columnist and CNN contributor Robert Novak identified Plame as a CIA operative
in a column, citing two senior administration officials.

The article suggested
Plame was responsible for sending her husband to Niger.

Libby was convicted
of one count of obstruction, two counts of perjury and one count of lying to the FBI about how he learned Plame’s identity
and whom he told. Prosecutors said he learned about Plame from Vice President Dick Cheney.

Federal prosecutor Patrick
Fitzpatrick discovered that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage leaked Valerie Plame’s name to the media inadvertently
at first to Robert Novak a reporter.But it was Karl Rove, VP Dick Cheney and
I. Lewis Scooter Libby who used her name in order to discredit her husband’s finding about the yellow cake, and it was
these three who called seven different reporters including Novak.

Bush said in 2004 that
anyone working at the Whitehouse who is found to be involved in the leaking the name of a CIA agent would immediately be fired.

The investigation discovered
that along with Libby, Karl Rove and VP Dick Cheney were directly involved with leaking Valerie Plame’s name to reporters,
yet neither was fired.

There have been rumblings
that if Libby was sent to prison, he was going to name names. Names the Whitehouse did not want to be known, which is why
Bush commuted his prison time. And Bush will most likely give Libby a full pardon before he leaves office.

As you see Pardons and
Commutations are very common, they have been given by both Democrats and Republicans alike. So what is all the fuss about
this particular commutation?

Well, there appears
to be a strong indication that if Libby went to jail he would further implicate senior Whitehouse officials, such as Cheney
and Rove.

And if you look at the
pardons of previous Presidents you will find the names of many unscrupulous people, but you won’t find the names of
anyone who could implicate high ranking Whitehouse officials.

If this had been any
other Pardon or Commutation nothing would have been said by anyone, and it most likely would never have been noticed by the
media, but this was a Senior Whitehouse official who in my opinion should have been tried for Treason along with Armitage,
Rove and Cheney for leaking the name of a Covert CIA agent.

So when Republicans
say look at all the pardons by Clinton, what they don’t say is, none of
his pardons were to people who leaked the name or names of Covert CIA agents, or who could implicate Senior Whitehouse officials,
and that is why this case is different from any other Presidential pardon or commutation.

David Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran, a Democratic Party Activist,
and David is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org

You can also read David’s Political Opinions at The Santa Ynez Valley
Journal

RANTS AND
RAVES

By: David Phillips

July 16, 2007

It seems that over the
last couple of weeks we have seen Republican Hypocrisy and trash, raise its head in many parts of the GOP…

A quick recap:

From Rudy’s camp;
they have one guy busted for selling cocaine and another guy, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) who in the past has campaigned on Family
Values, paying for prostitutes while also campaigning for Rudy in Louisiana…

Rudy Giuliani issued
a statement regarding the federal indictment of its South Carolina chairman, Thomas Ravenel. “Our campaign has no information
about the accusations pending against Mr. Ravenel. Mr. Ravenel has stepped down from his volunteer responsibilities with the
campaign.”

From McCain’s
camp; his campaign Manager quit last week, and McCain’s Florida Campaign Chairman was busted for buying sex in a men’s
bathroom…

McCain’s Florida
Campaign Co-Chairman has been busted for trying to pick up an undercover male police officer…

State Rep. Bob Allen
(R), a foe of LGBT rights in Florida, is charged with offering the cop $20 for oral sex in a washroom at Veteran’s Memorial
Park in Titusville…

Police said that Allen,
48, was seen coming in and out of a restroom three times before approaching the officer…

It seems like only yesterday
we were talking about a Republican Congressmen and his pedophile ways with Congressional Page’s…

And the Not so Honorable
Rev. Ted Haggard who while talking to President Bush every week about God, was smoking Crack and sleeping with male prostitutes
on his off day…

I am to the point that
whenever I hear a Republican talking about Family Values and Morals, I automatically think he is a Pedophile Crack Head who
buys sex in Men’s bathrooms…It’s really not that farfetched, now is it…

Fred Thompson has not
been caught with any prostitutes or seen smoking Crack, but we did learn that when he was a lobbyist in the early nineties,
one of his clients that he was an advocate for was Plan Parenthood, you may have heard that they support the “A” word…ABORTION…

Fred Thompson, who calls
himself a Washington Outsider, is very much the Washington Insider.

His first and big lobbying
client was a division of Westinghouse, which hired him to seek federal money for an experimental nuclear reactor on the Clinch
River in Tennessee. Other clients included Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the leftist Haitian leader; a Tennessee savings-and-loan
group advocating some of the looser regulations that contributed to the savings and loan crisis.

Fred Thompson who has
not announced his candidacy for President yet, has been coming up a strong second in most polls…I think that he may
be testing the waters as to how trashed he will be played in the Media…

Fred Thompson who says
he is Anti-Abortion obviously had no problems working for a Pro-Abortion organization…I don’t know what he’s
worried about with his hypocritical background; he should feel right at home with the other GOP candidates…

I came across a Useless
Stat that might help you if you are ever on Jeopardy and the category is Cost of College. The Cost of College has increased
800% since 1977. Source: US Census Bureau

Another stat that I
recently read is that the majority of insurgents who are fighting us in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia (See story on Home page)…You
can be sure that Bush would never mention this…We learned earlier this year that the Saudi’s were giving money
to the Sunni Insurgents in Iraq who use the money to buy weapons that kill American’s and Iraqi’s alike…

We are told that Iran
has also been supplying weapons to the Shiite’s in Iraq, who use these weapons to kill American’s and Iraqi’s
alike.

But on the up side we
did start to supply the Sunni Insurgents with weapons, that they promise to use only against al-Qaeda…

Dubai, Dubai, Dubai…

Halliburton is moving
its Headquarters to Dubai, to avoid paying taxes from the Billions they have been stealing…

Rudy Giuliani is also
moving his “Giuliani Partners” Headquarters to Dubai, to avoid paying taxes from the Billions they will be stealing…

Every industrialized nation in the World has Universal Health Care, except the United States.
Is it because our Health Care system is the best in the world , and Universal Health Care would make it worse?

Health Care in the United States is now a $2.2 trillion industry, encompassing
significant portions of federal, state and local budgets, as well as a huge private sector market. The issues of growth, inflation,
prices, sources of funding, as well as coverage and quality of services are central to much of today's health policy discussion.
From Consumer-Driven Health to Universal coverage, the state (and federal) debate has intensified in 2005-2006. (Source: National
Conference of State Legislatures)

According to a federal analysis released January, 2007, in 2005 U.S. health care spending
increased 6.9 percent to almost $2.0 trillion, or $6,697 per person. The health care portion of gross domestic
product (GDP) was 16.0 percent, slightly higher than the 15.9 percent share in 2004. (Source: National Conference of State
Legislatures)

The United States spends more per person than any other country in the world, yet every other
country has Universal Health Care.

So how does the Health Care system here in the United States, compare with all the Universal
Health Care systems throughout the world?

We spend more per person than anyone else, so we must have the best Health Care money can
buy, Right?

Wrong

According to the World Health Organization’s (W.H.O.) report from 2000, the United States
health care ranks only 37th in the world, yet we spend more then anyone else.

The report measured not just overall spending on health, but also how health care was distributed
among different groups in each of the 191 nations that are members of the World Health Organization.

The countries were judged according to five health-care categories that W.H.O surveys found
to be most important to the people in various nations.

The five measures used are:

Overall level of health or life
expectancy

Health fairness or life expectancy
as measured across various populations within a country

Responsiveness or how well people
rated performance of their health care system

Fairness in responsiveness among
different groups in the same country

Fairness in financing among different
groups, which looked at what proportion of income is devoted to health care

Fairness, well that is obviously something that has NEVER been associated with our Health
Care System.

Life Expectancy, well that is something that people assume we excel in with our Health Care
system.

The five top nations for Health Care

According to the report, the five top nations for Health Care were France, Italy, San Marino,
Andorra and Malta.

One surprise in the findings, said Dr. David Evans of the W.H.O.'s Global Program on Evidence
for Health Policy, was the good rankings for southern European countries such as Italy and Spain.

Oman ranked No. 8, a surprise because its health care system was in a shambles in the 1970's,
with very high infant mortality, and because it has a relatively small budget for health. Its spending per capita on health
is one-ninth of that of the United States, for example.

Dr. Christopher J. L. Murray, an international health economist from the Harvard School of
Public Health, who is one of two leaders of the project, said Oman demonstrates that great changes in a country's health can
be produced in a short period of time.

Another surprise was China's ranking of No. 144. A little more than a decade ago, China had
a public health care system, but it has collapsed, and now people there pay for virtually all their care out of pocket. It
was ranked No. 188 in fairness of financing.

The United States outspends the world and ranks near the top in average health measures, but
fails to deliver good health care to a large proportion of its population and distributes the cost relatively unfairly, according
to the report's measures, leaving it at number 37 in the rankings.

There are currently 49 million Americans without any health coverage, and 12 million are children.

As you saw with the world rankings, one of our major short comings is that large portions
of our population are left out of our health care system.

Morals

A word that Republicans like to throw around is morals. The Republican Party likes to think
that they have the high ground on all related policies that morals would play a roll, such as Abortion and Gay and Lesbian
marriage.

Never mind the fact that most Republicans are Pro War, and Pro Death penalty.

I cannot understand how Universal Health Care is not a Moral to be considered by the Republican
Party...

There are currently ten, soon to be eleven, Republicans running for President, and each and
every one of them are against Universal Health Care.

All of the Republican Presidential candidate cannot see that 49 million people, without
Healthcare is IMMORAL.

And in a stunning contrast, all eight Democratic Presidential candidates have a plan for Universal
Health Care.

I do not have enough space to go over each and every candidates plan for Universal Health
Care, but I will say some plans such a John Edwards calls for a tax increase for those who make more than $200,000 a year,
and other plans such as Obama, would have those who can't afford health care coverage getting a subsidy on a sliding scale
depending on their income, and virtually all businesses would have to share in the cost of coverage for their workers.

None of the plans call for eliminating the way most people get their health coverage, what
all eight Democratic Presidential candidates want to do, is make sure that everyone has access to health care, such as the
49 million who currently do not.

Premiums have increased 87 percent over the past six years. Family health coverage now costs
an average $11,480 annually, with workers paying an average of $2,973 toward those premiums, about $1,354 more than in 2000.
(Source: National Conference of State Legislatures)

The U.S. Census Bureau has estimated that because of the yearly increases on Health insurance
that we have experienced, they have projected that by the year 2012, 150 million Americans will no longer be able to afford
health insurance.

Universal Health Care, it is the Moral thing to do, and it is the Right thing to do…

David Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran, he is a Democrat Party Activist, and he is also the
Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org

E-Mail Questions or Comments: oneyoda@aol.com

You
can also read David’s Political Opinion’s in the Santa Ynez Valley Journal

CIVIL LIBERTIES IN A POST 911 WORLD

By: David Phillips

July 2, 2007

Since 911, Bush has covertly put into action; programs that he says are meant to help identify terrorists or
Evil Doers as he likes to call them. But in his eagerness to track down these Evil Doers, he has made a mockery of our Constitution
and trampled on dozens of our Civil Liberties.

Some of these programs even have names meant to instill a sense of nationalism like the Patriot Act, or the
Military Commissions Act. Other programs were never meant to become publicly known, but whistleblowers have leaked many other
programs to the Newspapers such as the NY Times.

Programs such as the Patriot Act that allow the FBI to search your home or business without a search warrant,
and it even allows them to do this when you are not there. And if they do find something, they can then get a search warrant
wait for your return then do another search and then arrest you. This has appropriately been named Sneak and Peek.

There are dozens of other programs neatly tucked away in the Patriot Act that allows the FBI and other agencies
to gather information. The Patriot Act also gives the government some very freighting powers, including the ability to make
secret arrests, issue secret subpoenas, create a vast new DNA database and even strip Americans of their citizenship and deport
them.

We have since learned that only six people in congress said that they had read the entire Patriot Act prior
to voting in favor of it.

A couple of months ago we found out that the FBI has been abusing the Patriot Act to gather hundreds of thousands
of illegal wiretaps on American citizens. FBI Director Robert Muller was called to testify before congress to explain the
abuse, Muller did admit that some of his field agents exceeded the authorization that the Patriot Act provides and Muller
said that he would make sure that it does not happen again.

Another program called the Military Commissions Act allows the CIA to literally kidnap someone anywhere in the
world, usher them off to a secret prison and conduct various act of torture, which Vice President Dick Cheney calls “Intense
Interrogation.”

The Military Commissions Act has also suspended the right of Habeas Corpus for detainees, which is the constitutional
right to have your case seen by a court of law, and to determine whether the detention is lawful.

Two weeks ago we learned that the FBI is seeking to create a data base consisting of more than six billion records
on all Americans. That works out to more than 20 individual records for every man, women and child in the United States. The
data mining program will cost the FBI around $12 million dollars.

House Science and Technology Committee members Brad Miller (D-NC) and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) requested last
week that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigate the proposal.

A story in The Washington Post last Thursday found "that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules
more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years.""Two dozen of the newly-discovered violations involved agents' requests for information
that U.S. law did not allow them to have."

Another program called The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is designed to track financial transactions from
more than 200 countries through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a Belgium-based, bank-owned entity, which is run by the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the U.S.
Department of the Treasury.

The National Security Agency (NSA) with authorization from Bush, have been wiretapping phones and data mining
e-mails of American citizens, hundreds of thousands of them at a time, without a warrant for Bush’s so called War on
Terror.

Bush has said that the Powers of the President, give him the authority to wiretap anyone he wants in his fight
against the Evil Doers. Last August a Federal Judge in Detroit ruled that the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance
program is unconstitutional. The Bush Whitehouse is appealing this ruling, so in the mean time, the warrantless wiretapping
program continues.

A couple of months ago we learned that Bush had given the approval for our Mail to be intercepted, opened, read,
confiscated or done with whatever he or they want. Bush said that a Signing Statement gives him the power to intercept all
mail.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) said it's "simply not true" that the president has the authority to open someone's
mail. The congressman went on to say, that Bush's action is "contrary to the Constitution." Hinchey said the president's use
of signing statements to gain more power has "corrupted the legislative process."

CIA Kidnappings and Torture or extraordinary rendition by the United States, with regard to the transfer of
suspected terrorists to countries known to employ harsh interrogation techniques (torture by proxy) that may rise to the level
of torture.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is currently suing Boeing for providing transportation for the rendition
of three terror suspects. The Italian courts have indicted 26 CIA agents, including the Rome station chief and head of CIA
for kidnappings in Italy. There are dozens of extraordinary rendition on record, many stories have appeared in all the major
papers in the country, and all of these kidnappings and torture have been approved by our government.

President Bush has signed more than 800 Signing Statements; these signing statements according to Bush, allow
him to enact these programs without the approval of Congress or the Courts.

A signing statement is a written pronouncement issued by the President of the United States upon the signing
of a bill into law.

Last year the American Bar Association described President Bush’s use of signing statements to modify
the meaning of duly enacted laws as "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers.

Bush has signed more Signing Statements then all the other presidents added together. Signing Statements are
not new, but Bush has used these signing statements in order to skirt constitutional laws. He has misused and abused this
privilege; Bush has used this power to Decree Law, and for the first six years as President, and with a Republican controlled
congress, his abuse went unchecked.

The Government is building mammoth data bases that will have records on every man, women and child. The Government
uses the backdrop of security and tells us that they are gathering all these records on American citizens so they can protect
us from the Terrorists or Evil Doers.

We the people have allowed our government to trample on our Constitution and trample on our Civil Liberties,
all in the name of little Security.

Benjamin Franklin said: “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will
deserve neither and lose both.”

Sounds like Franklin knew what he was talking about.

If you are not outraged by what you just read, then you have not
been paying attention.

David Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran, a Democratic Party Activist, and he is also
the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org E-Mail Questions or Comments: oneyoda@aol.com

You can also read David’s
Political Opinion’s in the Santa Ynez Valley Journal

RANTS AND RAVES

By: D avid Phillips

June 25, 2007

The Enemy of My Enemy

The Pentagon is trying
a new strategy in Iraq by arming Sunni insurgents. The Pentagon said that the Sunni's want to rid themselves of al-Qaeda,
just as much as we want to capture or kill al-Qaeda.

So, the Pentagon has
given permission to its officers on the ground in Iraq, to negotiate arms deals with tribal elders and other local leaders.
Arms, ammunition, body armor and other equipment, as well as cash, pickup trucks and fuel, have already been handed over to
Sunni’s in return for promises to only use the weapons on al-Qaeda and not on US troops.

Since the Sunni's PROMISE
not to use the weapons against the U.S. or is allies, it's a win win situation, what could possibly go wrong.

A little walk down memory
lane with some names of former military operations in Iraq:

·DESERT STORM

·IRAQI FREEDOM

·ENDURING FREEDOM

·TOGETHER FORWARD

·IRON HAMMER

·WARHORSE WHIRLWIND

·BULLDOG MAMMOTH

·PANTHER SQUEEZE

·RED DAWN

·ROCK SLIDE

·RIFLES FURY

·CENTAUR RODEO

·AND THE CURRENT MILITARY OP NAME IS: ARROWHEAD RIPPER which is part of the
Surge

The names on this list
are actual names that were used on various military operations, some you may remember and some you may not.

Let’s hope that
the Enemy of My Enemy strategy does not come back and bite us in the butt.

No Child Left Behind

In case you missed it,
the national education program No Child Left Behind (NCLB) that Bush first tested in Texas when he was a Governor, and brought
to the whole country as President is not doing very well.

A few stats from the
Department of Education: One Million kids dropped out of High School last year, and this year’s kids are dropping out
at a rate of 7000 everyday. One out of every four kids drops out.

Justice Department data
shows that 75 percent of all prison inmates here in the United States, are High School drop outs.

There are plenty of reasons
for these dismal figures starting with bad parenting, poor teaching, a new school
program (NCLB) that is only meant to teach a person to pass a test, and school systems that are glad to write off these drop
outs so that their stats on passing kids does not get dragged down. There are consequences for schools and school systems
if the passing rate for testing is sup par, such as cut backs in federal funds which ultimately only hurts the kids.

I think that it’s
about time to axe the No Child Left Behind program, because it is leaving millions of kids behind, and start a new program
called ‘Bringing Back the Children Left Behind’.

The Lighter Side of Politics

Last Thursday, an unidentified
White House aide said: “President Bush will be asking for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto “Gonzo”
Gonzales.” Gonzo is a loyal friend and associate of Bush going back to
when Bush was Governor of Texas.

The unidentified aide
said that the President was considering former Durham, North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong. The aide went on to say
that the President has heard his name mentioned a few times, but was unfamiliar with his background.

The aide concluded by
saying that President Bush was disappointed upon learning why former D.A. Mike Nifong’s name was in the news, and that
President Bush is no longer considering Mr. Nifong for the Position of Attorney General.

We have since learned
that President Bush is considering Florida judge Larry Seidlin, who cried on the bench, while presiding over the Anna Nicole
Smith cases a couple of months back. We are told that Bush was very impressed with Judge Seidlin’s compassion.

575 days until George
“Beavis” Bush and Dick “Butthead” Cheney leave Washington.

Global Climate Change, or Global Warming is a very hot topic (pun intended) and there seems to be a lot of people who are
paying millions to make sure you don’t hear the truth.

According to the report in April by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group made up of 2500 scientist
from 120 countries, the future holds many perils.

The IPCC’s final report is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global
warming mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said, "The poorest of the poor in the world
— and this includes poor people in prosperous societies — are going to be the worst hit," Pachauri went on to
say, "People who are poor are least able to adapt to climate change."

The report said up to 30 percent of species face an increased risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 3.6 degrees
above the average in the 1980s and 1990s.

Areas in drought will become even more dry, adding to the risks of hunger and disease, the report said. The world will
face heightened threats of flooding, severe storms and the erosion of coastlines.

Stephen Schneider, a Stanford scientist said, "We can fix this," by investing a small part of the world's economic growth
rate. It's trillions of dollars, but it's a very trivial thing."

For the first time, the scientists from the IPCC broke down their predictions into regions, and forecast that climate change
will affect billions of people.

North America will experience more severe storms with human and economic loss, and cultural and social disruptions. It
can expect more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, it said. Coasts will be swamped by rising sea levels.
In the short term, crop yields may increase by 5 percent to 20 percent from a longer growing season, but will plummet if temperatures
rise by 7.2 degrees.

Africa will be hardest hit. By 2020, up to 250 million people are likely to be exposed to water shortages. In some countries,
food production could fall by half, the report said.

Parts of Asia are threatened with massive flooding and avalanches from melting Himalayan glaciers. Europe also will see
its Alpine glaciers disappear. Australia's Great Barrier Reef will lose much of its coral to bleaching from even moderate
increases in sea temperatures, according to the report.

The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised many of the objections to the phrasing of the IPCC report, seeking to
tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections.

Lobbyists from Oil companies have been shelling out big bucks for scientists who will write reports that rebuke any claims
of Global Climate Change.

Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), confirmed that the organization had approached
scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths
and weaknesses of the IPCC report."

AEI has received more than $1.6 million from ExxonMobil.

Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth noted, there have been no peer-reviewed scientific articles published in recent years that
express any doubt that humans are contributing to climate change.

Yet more than 50 percent of news media coverage of the issue includes the oil industry's position on the subject.

"Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine
the scientific consensus on climate change."

The Royal Society, "Britain's premier scientific academy," examined Exxon's public reporting and found the company "last
year distributed $2.9 million to 39 groups that the society says misrepresent the science of climate change."

According to the group Exxon had promised it would not provide "any further funding to these organizations."

An Exxon spokesman responded that the company had "stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) this year,"

The United States already is responsible for roughly one-quarter of the world's carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases
that scientists blame for global warming.

In a 2004 report from the Energy Information Administration the countries who emit the most Carbon Dioxide emissions in
percentages:

The United States 21.9

China 17.4

Russia 6.2

Japan 4.7

India 4.1

Germany 3.2

Canada 2.2

U.K. 2.1

S. Korea 1.8

Italy 1.8

France 1.5

Australia 1.4

Spain 1.3

Brazil 1.3

Others 29.1

Bush has placed many mid-level managers in most of our Government agencies that deal with scientific data that relate to
Global Climate Change. Agencies such as the EPA, USGA, NASA, etc., all have people placed by the Bush Administration to read
all reports and edit the wording to down play any such data.

Prior to the Bush Administration, all scientific reports were generally peer reviewed before any publication. Bush has
done away with all peer reviews and the reports are published after they are edited by Bush personnel.

President Bush and his administration have been slow to agree that Global Warming exists and that greenhouse gases created
by man are to blame. More and more evidence has become available and he can no longer deny the facts and remain a nay sayer.

In a speech a few days ago President Bush said that the world needs to do more to stop greenhouse gases and slow Global
Warming. His speech was made in anticipation of his G-8 meeting in Germany this week. Global Warming will be one of the main
focal point’s at the G-8 summit and this could just be his way of heading off his critics, or maybe he truly has had
a change of his views, it’s hard to say. But with his long history of being All Hat and No Cattle, it is hard for anyone
to believe what he says, until he backs up his words with actions.

According to an ABC News-"Washington Post" poll, only 39 percent of registered voters approve of the way Congress is doing
its job. Fifty-three percent disapprove

And a recent poll by Rasmussen Reports finds Americans believe used car salesmen are more trustworthy than members of Congress.

Border Patrol chief David Aguilar told a congressional conference on U.S.-Mexico border issues that the border won't be
secured before 2013. That's when the secure border initiative, including manpower, technology and infrastructure, is scheduled
to be complete. Until then, Aguilar says the Border Patrol must "manage the expectations of the country."

Aguilar reports 596 assaults against Border Patrol agents this year. And he expects that to increase as the Border Patrol
adds agents and 290 miles of fence.

High Gas Prices Getting you Down? Well, you are not alone. Here are a few facts that will make you scratch your head…

The oil industry’s influence on Congress has been fairly partisan -- 80 percent of their contributions since 2001
have gone to Republicans. While the last couple of months Democrats have seen their campaign contributions rise since they
have taken control…He who has the power gets the dough…

Since 1990, big oil has spent more than $200 million on Congress. Since June of 1997, the price of a gallon of gas has
risen from about $1.26 a gallon to $3.20 per gallon at the beginning of the June. That's an increase of 154 percent, dwarfing
the nominal wage growth during that time of only 39...

The Center for Public Integrity, a Lobby Watch organization lists hundreds of companies from dozens of countries that throw
money at Congress to influence legislation and voting out comes, I urge everyone to go to their web site and see what your
elected officials have been doing…

This past Friday the office of Vice President Dick Cheney announced that Cheney's Pacemaker Needs Fresh Battery…They
said that this summer Cheney will have his pacemaker replaced…hoping that the warmer weather of summer will counter
act the bitter coldness that runs through his veins…

The death toll for American troops killed in Iraq just surpassed 3500...Bush’s escalation of troops has also escalated
the deaths, both for Americans as well as Iraqi’s…

Sex…

Conservatives and Liberals in Congress have a new Sex Bill aimed at reducing unintended pregnancies…

The liberals are backing a measure that they call Prevention First, a common sense platform that seeks to reduce unintended
pregnancies with better information and increasing access to contraceptives…

The Conservative initiative, the customary Abstinence, even though a recent government report said that abstinence only
policy does not work…The Conservatives as predictable

have throw common sense out the window, to appease their base of religious conservatives…

When will they ever learn, I would even bet that conservatives have sex, and with sex comes unintended pregnancies…

The Conservative motto…MAKE WAR NOT SEX…

Well that’s about it for this weeks rants and raves…Only 588 more days until Bush and Cheney take their long
walk into the sunset on this screwed up planet that these two have bastardized..

Lt. General Douglas Lute, the man picked by President Bush to be the War Czar (fall guy) testified before the Senate during
his conformation hearings last week…

The Lt. General is obviously a reluctant candidate for War czar because when Bush first made his announcement for the position,
Lt. General Douglas Lute said that he thought it was a bad idea…

Anyhow, with some poking and prodding he has accepted the position (because no one else would) and only needs the approval
of the Senate…

During last Thursdays testimony before the Senate, the Lt. General showed concerns for the Iraqi government. Lt. General
Lute said, “The question in my mind is not to what extent can we force them (referring to the Iraqi government)…to
a particular outcome but rather to what degree do they actually have the capacity themselves to produce the outcome.”

Lt. Gen. Lute went on to say, “pressed to hard, will we, in turn, end up with an outcome that isn’t really
worth the paper it’s written on.”

The Lt. General’s words cast uncertainty

that the Iraqi government would be able to take control of it’s country on it’s own any time soon…

Come this September, General David Petraeus the man who is in charge in Iraq, and the man who is executing the new strategy,
will give the Senate a report on how well the surge (escalation) is working…

We do know that the Surge (escalation) has produced a surge of deaths for both Americans and Iraqi’s…The last
few months American deaths have been the highest since the start of the Iraqi War..

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army's second in command in Iraq said a couple of weeks ago, "Right now, if you asked
me, I would tell you I'll probably need a little bit more time to do a true assessment. If I think I might need a little more
time, (when making the September assessment to Congress) I will give an assessment saying, 'But I'd like to have a little
more time."

Complicating matters, he said, is that the enemy knows about the September deadline and is likely to increase the
violence during the next few months in an effort to push the U.S. out. "They understand that if things aren't going well,
a recommendation might be made to reduce our force presence here in Iraq," said Odierno. "So in my mind, of course they are
going to do that."

This past Friday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired Four Star Gen. Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "It
would be a backward looking and very contentious process," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at a Pentagon news conference
where he announced he would recommend Adm. Mike Mullen to replace Pace

.

Adm. Mike Mullen is the chief of naval operations, and Gates praised him for having the "vision strategic insight and integrity
to lead America's armed forces."

General Pace was also taking heat from Congress for two other problems, his recent statements that he believes homosexual
behavior is immoral, and a letter he wrote to the judge in the Scooter Libby case attesting to Mr. Libby's character…

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for two years, and vice chairman for the previous four, Pace has been involved
in all of the key decisions leading to the 2002 invasion of Iraq and the planning for the post-Saddam Hussein era.

"President Bush appreciates Gen. Pace's long and distinguished service to the country and as chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, who was traveling overseas with Bush. "He is an example for all our
men and women in uniform and has been an integral part of the president's national security team."

My personal opinion for Gen. Pace being fired is to keep him from testifying at future hearings, and to put a new spin
with a new face in Adm. Mullen…

We are all ready hearing rumblings that September will be to soon to provide an accurate assessment of the (escalation)
surge, and if Bush can stall his critics that want to start bring the troops home long enough, it could be the end of January
or the beginning of February 2008 before congress reconvenes from their holiday break…

So, before September comes, Bush is getting his ducks (Generals and Admirals) all lined up in a row, in anticipation of
this Septembers hearings (that more then likely will never happen) about the progress of the surge (escalation) in Iraq …

Does anyone care, that last Tuesday Bush said that he does not want more cows tested for Mad Cow then we already test?

The USDA owns the testing kits...A small cattle company in Kansas wants to test ALL of his cows, but the USDA said they
would not give him or sell him or allow him to test ALL of his Cows...So the guy in Kansas sues the USDA and the Judge says
that the USDA must allow him to test his Cows...So the USDA goes to a higher court and appeals the lower courts ruling...So
now the guy in Kansas still cannot test his cows...

The LARGER cattle companies test less then 1% of the cows they butcher and don't want ALL cows tested...

The little guy in Kansas says that he wants to guarantee and tells his consumers that ALL of his cows are tested...

The Big cattle company does not want the little cattle company to be able to say that to his consumers...

Does anyone care, that Bush doesn't care if you eat MAD COW BEEF?

May 30 2005 Dead Eye Dick said that the insurgency was in it’s “last throes“ in Iraq and Dead Eye Dick
predicted “the level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline.”…

Fast forward two years to May 30, 2007 and we find that 2000 more American’s

have died and more then 12,000 have been wounded along with tens of thousands of dead and wounded Iraqi’s...

The Bush administration has continued to get at least one thing right when making predictions, and that is, their predictions
have been 100 percent wrong from the time they started this War to the present…

Is it just me, I cannot be the only person to notice that when our Government or our media are talking about terrorists,
they are now saying that the terrorists are al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda linked, suspected al-Qaeda, or al-Qaeda inspired…

Our Government for the last several months have been linking all the major attacks in Iraq to al-Qaeda, if a car bomb blows
up at a market place it’s al-Qaeda, if a suicide bomber blows himself up in a crowd of people it’s al-Qaeda, if
a helicopter is shot down it’s al-Qaeda and then they down play mentioning insurgent or sectarian killings…

I guess what they say is not as important as what we hear…

Since the fall of Baghdad and Saddam’s statue coming down, only 539 Iraqi’s have been allowed to immigrate
to the United States…We have all heard reports from Iraq about how we would allow those that help coalition forces to
immigrate to avoid being killed because of their help…The United States has allowed millions to immigrate here during
and following every War that we have been in and during and following most Wars that we have not been in…

If only they spoke Mexican…

Well, George W. Bush is off to Germany for the annual G-8 summit meeting where this years hot topics will be a lot like
last years hot topics, Sudan and Darfur, Global Warming, World Bank, and aids in Africa…

The G-8 summit draws large crowds of protesters and this years event is said to have over 30,000 protesting and Germany
has more then 15,000 police to keep things under control…

Riots have already started 125 police officers have been injured and dozens of protesters were arrested…

Anyhow, Bush will be out of the country for the week and he might get the chance to see how people in other countries feel
about him and his policies of unilateralism…Then again it’s more than likely that he will be shielded from all
those nasty people who protest and be totally oblivious to his surroundings as usual…

A look at the 2008 Republican Presidential candidates
who recently held their second debate at the University of South Carolina. And back by popular demand and in no particular
order, here are your 2008 Republican nominees for President.

Rudy Giuliani former Mayor of New York City

John McCain Senator from Arizona

Mike Huckabee former Governor from Arkansas

Dr. Ron Paul Representative from Texas

Tom Tancredo Representative from Colorado

Duncan Hunter Representative from California

Sam Brownback Senator from Kansas

Mitt Romney former Governor from Massachusetts

Tommy Thompson former Governor from Wisconsin

Jim Gilmore former Governor from Virginia

The Ten GOP candidates are a very dissimilar group of men
that cover all the color spectrums between eggshell and white.

The top three candidates for the GOP are former New York
City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney.

Rudy Giuliani is currently the front-runner who is campaigning
on his strength and leadership that he had shown while mayor, and his courage and fortitude that he showed after 911.

Rudy Giuliani is not your typical conservative; Giuliani
is pro-choice, pro gay and lesbian rights, and anti guns. But Rudy is pro War, he supports Bush’s surge in Iraq, and
he is pro torture, “if it is needed”, according to what he said during this debate.

Giuliani has also been married three times, and has had
an affair while married to each woman. Giuliani’s first wife was his second cousin, who he was married to for fourteen
years. But Giuliani said that it did not count because the Catholic Church annulled the marriage.

Senator John McCain of Arizona is currently in second place
in the polls; Senator McCain who was in Iraq a few weeks ago decided to do a little shopping at an Iraqi Bazaar to illustrate
how well the surge has been going in Baghdad.

Senator McCain took a CNN film crew with him to cover the
shopping trip, so thatAmerican citizens back home could see some good news from
Iraq. Senator McCain even said that it is perfectly safe for Americans to walk many of the streets of Baghdad without any
fear of being shot because the surge is working.

The CNN film crew did show the Senator bartering with a
local Iraqi merchant over some rugs. The film crew also showed the 100 soldiers who escorted the Senator on his shopping spree,
as well as three Black Hawk Helicopters overhead, and sniper teams on the rooftops.

The Senator about a week later did come clean and he said
that he did embellish about being able to walk the streets of Baghdad, but he did buy a few rugs.

Senator McCain does have the background and experience
that one would want to see in a President. Senator McCain is a Vietnam War Hero, he’s a four term Senator, he is anti-abortion,
pro war, and he supports the surge in Iraq.

Mitt Romney the former Governor of Massachusetts is currently
third in the polls.

While governor, Romney was a pro choice, pro gay and lesbian
rights, and anti guns republican.

When Mitt Romney decided to run for President a little
over two years ago, he said he did some soul searching and is now anti abortion, anti gay and lesbian marriage and pro guns.
And just two weeks ago he joined the NRA and received a Lifetime membership. At least Romney was smart enough to get his membership
to the NRA before the debating season began.

Mitt Romney is also pro war, he supports President Bush’s
surge, and he also said he would approve torture if it were needed.

This brings us to what is called the second tier of candidate,
which includes Mike Huckabee former Governor of Arkansas, Tommy Thompson former Governor of Wisconsin, and Senator Sam Brownback
from Kansas.

Mike Huckabee spent two terms as Governor of Arkansas,
he is a Baptist Minister, and during the last debate he raised his hand when the question was asked: Who does NOT believe
in Evolution.

Tommy Thompson former Governor of Wisconsin served four
terms as governor and was the Secretary of Health and Human Services for President Bush.

Governor Thompson wants the eighteen provinces in Iraq
to each elect there own government along the lines of our fifty states. He said that he would divide the Oil into thirds,
with one third going to the Central Government, one-third going to the eighteen provinces and one third going to each and
every person in Iraq. Thompson is an anti-abortion, anti gay and lesbian rights, and pro gun.

Senator Sam Brownback from Kansas is in his second term;
at the debate he said “We can win over there, if we can come together here”. Meaning if our country, which is
split, can come together we can win the War in Iraq. Senator Brownback is also anti abortion, anti gay and lesbian rights,
pro gun, and also does Not believe in Evolution.

This brings us to the third tier of candidates, and they
include Rep. Dr. Ron Paul from Texas, Rep. Tom Tancredo from Colorado, Rep. Duncan Hunter from California, and Jim Gilmore
former Governor from Virginia.

Dr. Paul was the 1988 Libertarian candidate for President,
he is a ten term Congressmen, he is one of only six republicans to vote against giving Bush the power to start Wars. Dr. Paul
wants to pull the troops out of Iraq, and bring them home.

Tom Tancredo opposes the surge in Iraq, and would pull
the troops back, but keep them in the region. Tancredo is currently serving his fifth term in congress, he is anti abortion,
anti gay and lesbian rights, pro guns, and he also does Not believe in Evolution.

Duncan Hunter at the debate said; that Iraq has 129 battalions,
and they all need to stand up so our forces can stand down (The Bush slogan). Congressmen Hunter is currently serving his
fourteenth term in Washington. Hunter is also anti abortion, anti gay and lesbian rights, and pro guns.

Former Governor Jim Gilmore of Virginia also supports the
War, he said that we may have to attack Iran, and like almost all the other candidates, he to, is anti abortion, anti gay
and lesbian rights, and pro guns.

Well, there you have it, Ten Elephants all various shades
of white, and all vying for the GOP Presidential nomination.

The front-runner, Giuliani is the most liberal and looks
like a democrat in many ways, and nothing like the conservatives that you would expect to see from the GOP. If the GOP is
to be true to it’s party faithful, Giuliani will not be the nominee. But hope is not lost, there are several others
that are running, that meet all the prerequisites of a conservative.

Last November President Bush talked about benchmarks
that he would use with regard to the Iraqi government, to show that they are willing to take control of their own country.

But Bush was all talk, and no benchmarks were put
in place, and Bush never spoke of benchmarks again, until the Democrats placed them in the War spending bill that Bush recently
vetoed…

Bush said that he would veto any War spending bill
that called for benchmarks, or a timeline for our withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

And Bush was true to his word, he vetoed the War
spending bill that would:

Continue Bush’s
so called support for the troops

Insist that
the Iraqi government start to take a bigger roll in security

Set a timeline
for bringing our troops home

Now Bush says he is willing to consider some benchmarks
for the Iraqi government. But only if the new spending bill gives Bush all the billions he is asking for, and again only if
there is no timeline for our troops to come home.

Why should we believe that Bush would agree on any
benchmarks that would be enforced?

This past week two items of interest should be noted
regarding Bush’s folly into Iraq.

The democratically
elected government of Iraq wants to take a two-month summer vacation. Something I am sure they learned from watching how Bush
leads the United States.

The democratically
elected Parliament has gathered 144 signatures from the 275 seats in their government calling for a timeline for Americans
to leave their county.

It seems the majority of the Iraqi Parliament wants
to set a timeline that would end the occupation of their country. Simply put, they want us to leave.

Yeah, like that’s going to happen…

New poll just out by Newsweek, shows President Bush’s
approval rating at an all time low for him, 28 percent.

President Richard M. Nixon holds the modern record
for the lowest approval record at 23 percent…

You can be sure, that President Bush will do what
he can to be number one…

Wow, that didn’t take long, Bush is working
(or as he likes to say, “It’s Hard Work”) at catching up with Nixon’s record low approval rating.
The White House on Friday, warned the Democrats that Bush would veto an appropriations bill if the democrats try to boost
spending on Education…

Well, we can’t have that; more people having
access to education, what are the democrats thinking, we have a War to fight…Bush’s policy of “Leaving No
Child Behind”, has morphed into Bush’s policy of, “Leaving No Troops Behind in the United States”…

Media Mogul Rupert Murdock, the owner of Fox Corporation,
dozens of Television stations around the world, Publishing companies, Radio Stations, and who also owns the very right leaning
Fox News Channel, is trying to buy the left leaning Newspaper the New York Times.

Maybe if the sale goes through, he will turn the
New York Times into a Fair and Balanced Newspaper, just like Fox News Channel…

Three Republican Presidential candidates, Huckabee,
Brownback, and Tancredo, all say that they do NOT believe in Evolution…Maybe it’s just me, but I think that all
Presidents should believe in Evolution…

I wonder where President Bush stands on this…Yeah,
we all ready know, he’s all about the Creationism, because it Creates more votes…

This Monday, May 14th, postage stamps
go up to .41 cents…

616 days until George “The Commander Guy”
Bush, and Dick “I shoot Lawyers in the Face” Cheney, hit the road and leave Washington for good…

Gasoline prices across the country are rising so fast that
most gas stations are now changing their prices daily. The average cost of a gallon of gas in the United States is $3.07,
and in parts of California it has already topped $4.00.

With the summer driving season still ahead of us, it seems
that there is no end in sight to the rising prices.

We are told by the so called experts on Wall Street and
from our own government, that the driving habits of Americans will have to change before we will see a downward trend in the
price of gasoline.

We also are hearing from these same experts that Americans
are not changing their driving habits, which they say, indicates that Americans are willing to pay these exorbitant prices.

Well, excuse me when I say that what our government and
these experts are saying is a bunch of malarkey.

First of all a large portion of the American public live
in the suburbs, and work in the cities, which lends itself to longer drive times. Most families these days have at least two
cars and both parents are working, so now each have to drive to their jobs.

So until the jobs move out to the suburbs, or Americans
move back to the cities our consumption of gasoline will continue on the pace that it is currently on.

So what is behind the rising prices at the Pumps?

Well, if you believe the Oil companies such as Exxon, they
will tell you that the world is consuming more gasoline, which is creating shortages and driving up demands.

Or as your business or economics teacher would say: Supply
Vs. Demand.

Sounds straightforward, less supply creates a larger demand,
and more supplies equal less demand.

Simple right?

The Oil corporations are making record profits, in fact
last year Exxon made over 59 Billion dollars, and they set the record for the most profits by an American corporation, ever.

So now you might be saying that their record profits, are
because the demand for gasoline is out pacing the supply, and you would be partially correct.

We do have shortages in gasoline here in the United States
because we do not have the refinery capacity to produce enough gasoline domestically that Americans use on a daily basis.
To fill the shortages, Oil companies have been importing gasoline here to the United States, from refineries in other countries.

The Energy Information Agency has said that their data
shows that the demand for gasoline here in the United States is 2.3 percent higher than the same period a year ago.

So why not build more refineries here in the United States
so we can increase the supply, stop the imports of gasoline from other countries and lower the prices?

President Bush a few years back gave billions in tax breaks
to the Oil companies such as Exxon for the sole purpose of building more refineries right here in the good ole USA. Exxon
and the other Oil companies said no thanks to building new refineries, because they know that more supply equals less profits.

The United States has not built any new refineries since
the 70’s, more than 30 years ago. Some of the reasons for this are: no one wants a refinery in their back yard, environmentalists
have placed road blocks with the courts, and the Oil companies know what will happen to their profits.

Over the last six years, President Bush and the Republican
Party have been pushing to find more sources of Oil closer to home.There have
been calls for more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and more drilling in Alaska in an area called The Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge (ANWR).

The House of Representatives has recently approved of more
drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but further drilling and exploration in ANWR is still on hold.

According to the Department of Interior's 1987 resource
evaluation of ANWR's Coastal Plain, there is a 95% chance that a 'super field' with 500 million barrels would be discovered.
DOI also estimates that there exists a mean of 3.5 billion barrels

While the exact amount of Oil at ANWR is not known, there
has been a strong push by the Oil companies and President Bush to find out.

April of 2005 Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens urged his colleagues
to support drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “Do it to boost our domestic oil supplies”, he said.
“Do it to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

What Stevens did not say to his colleagues on the Senate
floor that day, was that the Oil from ANWR would be sold to Japan and Russia.

The Democratic Party has done all they could to prevent
any further exploration and drilling at ANWR. In 2005 the democrats did offer to allow more exploration and drilling at ANWR
if President Bush would keep the oil here in the United States to be refined here and sold to American consumers, but President
Bush said no.

But why sell our domestic oil to other nations, when we
have become so dependent on foreign oil?

Greed.

The Saudi’s and OPEC along with Bush and Cheney want
to keep us dependent on foreign oil for as long as possible for profits.

In 2001 when Bush took office the price of a barrel
of oil on the New York Stock Exchange was approx. $19.00…In July 2006 the price of a barrel of oil on the New York Stock
Exchange reached a high of $78.00…Source The New York Stock Exchange…

Our friends the Saudi’s have made a fortune under
President Bush’s reign.

So what can be done to lower the prices at the pumps?

There is not much to hope for in the short term, but in
the long run there is plenty we can do to get the prices at the pumps lowered.

We can demand that domestic oil stay in the United States
and replace the foreign oil that is refined at our plants if we are going to increase our domestic drilling. We can push our
representatives to build more refineries. We can demand more money for the development of alternative energy sources. We can
demand cars that are more fuel-efficient, and cars that can run on alternative fuels. We can demand that our elected officials
stop the gauging being conducted by Exxon and the others.

The months leading up to the 2006 election we miraculously
saw the prices at the pumps come down, not because all of a sudden there was an increase of gasoline, but because they could.

There are some little changes that everyone can do to help
offset the high prices we face today at the pumps, such as car pooling, maintain tire pressures, clean air filters, and tune-ups.
But it will take you, the American citizen to speak out to your politicians, to tell them to build the refineries, then drill
for the domestic oil, which would make us no longer dependent on OPEC or other oil producing nations.

The NRA (National Rifle
Association) this past week has come out in support of selling guns to terror suspects…

Washington has proposed
legislation that would prohibit suspected terrorist’s from buying guns (they actually need to make a law for this…amazing)…The
Justice Department backs this bill which would allow the Attorney General to block sales of fire arms at his discretion…

A couple of weeks back
after the Virginia Tech killings by a student with mental problems, there was a push to prohibit the sales of guns to people
with mental impairments…Can you guess which side of the argument the NRA was on?

That’s right,
they also want to allow sales of guns to all mental patients…The NRA has one of the largest lobbying groups in Washington,
and contribute millions to our elected officials…I wonder how hard these politicians will push to stop the sales of
guns to terrorists and mental patients?

Only in America will
you find this sort of insanity…

Last week, a House
Foreign Affairs subcommittee held a hearing on the Bush administration’s practice of extraordinary rendition (CIA kidnappings
where people are sent to secret prisons and tortured), and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said:

“if in
order to protect the rights of one or two people, or five people or ten people, who are mistakenly abducted because their
names were the same or because they went to a mosque that they didn’t know this thing was going on in the back room,
if 10 of those people suffer those consequences, but in order for us to take 90 other people off the street who are intent
and involved in plans that would slaughter tens of thousands of our citizens, I’m afraid that’s the price we pay
in a real world.”

When members of the
audience groaned, Rohrabacher said, “Well, I hope it’s your families, I hope it’s your families that
suffer the consequences.”

I wonder if Rep. Rohrabacher
was to have one of his family members mistakenly picked up by the CIA in the middle of the night and sent to a secret prison
to be tortured, if he would feel the same way…

Yeah, I’m guessing
he would, because he sounds like a real SOB…

How’s that chicken
you are eating tasting these days?

Unless you have been
living under a rock, you most likely have heard about the tainted pet food that has resulted in thousands of pets getting
sick and dying, and hundreds of brands of pet food, being recalled
because they are contaminated with an
industrial chemical called melamine.

Three government agencies — the Agriculture
Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have placed a hold on 20 million chickens,
because the chicken farmers used feed that contained the same pet food that was found to be tainted with the industrial chemical
melamine…

Oh yeah, last week the FDA also said that they
found that Hogs were also fed the same tainted pet food…

The FDA inspects less than 1% of the food supply
for our country, partially because we are now importing billions of dollars in food from China and other countries, and also
because the FDA is woefully under staffed.

Their budget has been slashed in half over the
last six years, and now the FDA has announced plans to eliminate 7 of 13 field labs and merge the workers into 5 larger field
labs…

50 US Congressmen have asked the FDA to halt
their closings until Congress has a chance to review their plans…

And remember, the FDA checks less then 1% of
the food we eat, they are an organization that reacts to hazards that have caused people to either get sick or die…

The FDA web site lists each week the products
that they have deemed anywhere from deadly to just dangerous, I urge everyone to check out their web site out at least once
a week…www.fda.gov…

A couple of factoids:

In 2001 the year Bush took office the poverty
level in the United States was at a 26 year low…In 2007 the poverty level in the United States is at a 32 year high…Source
2005 census figures

In 2001 when Bush took office the price of a
barrel of oil on the New York Stock Exchange was approx. $19.00…In July 2006 the price of a barrel of oil on the New
York Stock Exchange reached a high of $78.00…Source The New York Stock Exchange…

Rudy Rudy Rudy, in
case you missed it, Giuliani said this past week that if you vote for a Democrat for President in 2008, you should expect
another attack here in the United States by terrorists…

I just want to point
out that Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in charge of his city when we were attacked on September 11, 2001, and George W. Bush was
the President…

So why the hell does
he think Republicans can do a better job than the Democrats, when Giuliani and Bush both Republicans, allowed New York to
be attacked in the first place…

I would not normally
put the blame in his lap, but Giuliani is the one who is saying he could do a better job…So if he wants to say Democrats
can not protect us better than Republicans can, that’s fine, but he must also accept the blame for September 11, 2001,
because he was the man in charge as he constantly reminds everyone…

Rudy, you cannot have
it both ways…

When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified
before the Senate Judiciary Committee he said, "I don't recall" and its variants ("I have no recollection," "I have no memory")
64 times…

President George W. Bush said of Gonzales after
his testimony, "The attorney general went up and gave a very candid assessment and answered every question he could possibly
answer, honestly answer, in a way that increased my confidence in his ability to do the job"...

You’re doing a heck of a job, Gonzo…

Some of the latest scandals from the Bush Administration
that you may have missed:

ØWorld Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war as deputy defense secretary, acknowledged he erred in helping a female friend
he is dating to get transferred to a high-paying job at the State Department while remaining on the World Bank payroll. The
revelations fueled calls from the bank's staff association for him to resign.

ØMatteo Fontana, a Department of Education official who oversaw the student loan industry, was put on leave after disclosure that he owned at least
$100,000 worth of stock in a student loan company.

ØLurita Doan, head of the General Services Administration, attended a luncheon at the agency earlier this year with other top GSA political appointees at
which Scott Jennings, a top Rove aide, gave a PowerPoint demonstration on how to help Republican candidates in 2008. A congressional
committee is investigating whether the remarks violated a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using
their positions for political purposes.

ØJulie MacDonald, who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but has no academic background in biology, overrode recommendations of agency scientists about
how to protect endangered species and improperly leaked internal information to private groups, the Interior Department's
inspector general said.

Bush’s cronyism and incompetence at work…there
are literally hundreds of people that have been placed in various positions throughout the Bush administration that have little
or no qualifications to do the jobs they have been assigned to do…

This week, the War Spending Bill that was just
passed by the Senate will make it to Bush’s desk, where he has said that he will be vetoing the bill, because it has
conditions and timelines for the Iraqi Government, and for our troop withdrawal…

The majority of the people in the United States
have the same opinion as the democrats on setting timelines, and want to see our troops start to come home…But the only
timelines that Bush has been willing to agree upon, are the timelines that have extended the tours of Duty for our troops,
from 12 months to 15 months…

And finally, James Doohan AKA “Scotty”
from Star Trek, actually made it to outer space. This past Saturday a small portion of his ashes were sent into space by a
rocket launched from Spaceport America, a commercial spaceport
being developed north of Las Cruces, NM…

.I think that this
is a very cool ending for the man who was constantly saving Captain Kirk’s butt on TV, when Kirk would say: “Beam
me up Scotty”…

The Power of Three

By: David Phillips

April 23, 2007

You know that old saying; “Things Happened in Threes”,
like the deaths of famous people, or tragic events, and then you say to yourself, that is the third time in the last few days
that this or that has happened…

We even have a term for such thinking its called “numerology”,
the study of the supposed influence of numbers on humans and human events…

I am going to point out a few such occurrence’s that
have caught my eye…

First up I will point out how three tragic events all had
common denominators of numerical influence… In this case I will point out how the Same Week, in the Same Month, will
show how all three are tied to “Things Happened in Threes”…

April 19, 1995 the killings at the Oklahoma
Bombing

April 20, 1999 the killings at Columbine
High School

April 16, 2007 the killings at Virginia Tech

Next up, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and the people
around him…

Michael Battle director of the Executive
Office of U.S. Attorneys

Kyle Sampson Chief of Staff to Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales

Monica Goodling, the Attorney Generals Liaison
to the White House

The three highest-ranking officials under Attorney General
Gonzales have RESIGNED from the Justice Department…“Things Happened in Threes”,

The Power of Three has shined it’s light towards
congress, and it is the FBI who is shinning this light…

Republican Jim Gibbons (R-NV) former Congressmen
and current Governor of Nevada, is under investigation for receiving bribes in exchange of no-bid contracts worth millions
to his friends in Reno, NV. A recall campaign is under way by the people of Nevada…

Republican John Doolittle (R-CA) is under
investigation for receiving bribes from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Congressmen Doolittle stepped down last week from
the House Appropriations Committee, until the investigation comes to an end…

Republican Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) is under
investigation for a land deal that would benefit his friend and business associate who was also a campaign donor. Congressmen Renzi stepped down last week from the House Intelligence Committee, until this matter is cleared
up…

The Power of Three see what I mean…and there are
more commonalities to these three Republicans with the phrase “Things Happen in Threes”…

The FBI is also investigating the wives of all three of
these men…

Dawn Gibbons…wife of Gov. and former
Republican Congressmen Jim Gibbons

Julie Doolittle…wife of Republican
Congressmen John Doolittle

Roberta Renzi…wife of Republican Congressmen
Rick Renzi

More Supernatural examples of the saying “Things
Happen in Three’s”…Or Numerology…

Eerie isn’t it?

How about this ditty of people and the power of three…

Just a few weeks back, all Three cable news networks (MSNBC,
CNN, and FOX) covered the same Three stories 24 hours a day for several weeks…No it was not the about the Wars…No
it was not about Bush, Cheney or Condi…

The three cable News channels were all about:

Lisa Nowak… the NASA astronaut who
wore a diaper in route to a possible kidnapping and murder plot…

Britney Spears…the now party girl and
former singer, barber, and rehab girl who did not know that when she was told she needs to spend 30 days in rehab, that they
meant 30 days in a Row…

Anna Nicole Smith…another party girl
who wanted to be just like Marylyn Monroe who died at 36…Anna Nicole Smith beat out her idol by Three years…39…

Now obviously these things really don’t have much
in common…Or do they???

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) who
is responsible for making sure imports are safe, has suffered massive budget cuts under the Bush administration which has
seen 50 percent of it’s staff slashed, while at the same time, the imports that it has been responsible for checking
have increased by 50 percent. The lab is outdated and until recently, the commission has been short one commissioner…

This year alone the CPSC has announced 99 product
recalls, which 63 came from Communist China imports. Adding to the crisis is the overwhelming increase in imported goods.
When the CPSC was created in 1973, we had a trade surplus, last year our trade deficit in products topped $386 billion…

Some of the imports that the CPSC has recalled include
defective ladders, dangerous toys, lunchboxes found with lead in the vinyl, as well as lead in baby highchairs and bibs…

The current acting head of the commission appointed
by President Bush, is anti consumer and favors manufacturers. He is a former lobbyist and the former head of consumer affairs
for the Chamber of Commerce…

Bush also appointed the former executive vice president
of the National Association of Manufacturers, as the final commissioner of the CPSC…

The head of the American Toy Association spoke at
some congressional hearings and told them that they need to increase funding to the CPSC, but instead Bush has pushed for
more cuts…

All these cuts at the CPSC along with the cuts at
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who in 2001 had a staff of more than 9000 inspectors, and now has a staff of a little
more than 2000 inspectors, has also seen their work load increase to the point that they cannot do their job in the approved
manner…

What we are seeing is gross negligence from the
Bush administration and his total lack of consideration and protection of Consumers…

I wonder if Bush has someone tasting his food before
he eats it…

Well, It looks like GonzoGate is heating up, the
Attorney General will be testifying before Congress this week, and this scandal just keeps snowballing.

From this scandal other scandals are blooming…

We learned this past week, that the White House
staff used the Republican National Committee’s web server for e-mails to keep them away from the White House and hidden
form democratic subpoenas, which is illegal…

The White House staffs including Karl Rove were
informed in 2004 that what they were doing is illegal, but do you think breaking a few laws would stop them. Then we learned
the White House and Karl Rove deleted millions of e-mails that they said was a mistake…

The hits just keep on coming…

We have also learned that Monica Goodling, the Attorney
Generals Liaison to the White House who at the age of 33 has never prosecuted any case in court, who’s position is the
third highest in the Justice Department, who told Congress she would exercise her fifth amendment rights if subpoenaed and
who resigned a few days later, is a graduate from Pat Robertson’s Regent College law school, that is rated as a tier
four (The Lowest) school by the US Government college ranking system…

We have also learned from GonzoGate, that the White
House has hired 150 law graduates from Pat Robertson’s Regent College…Can I get a Hallelujah, or maybe an Amen
would be better…

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Children in Crisis:
Voices from the Holocaust April 15, 2007

“The first
to perish were the children...From these a new dawn might have risen.”

— Yitzhak
Katzenelson, Yiddish poet

The United States
Congress established Days of Remembrance as our nation’s annual commemoration of victims of the Holocaust, just as the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is our permanent living memorial to those victims.

This year Holocaust
Remembrance Day is Sunday, April 15, 2007. The Museum has designated “Children in Crisis: Voices from the Holocaust”
as the focus for the 2007 observance.

SPEAKER PELOSI, SYRIA, AND WHAT YOU'RE NOT HEARINGBy: David PhillipsApril 8, 2007

The last few days the right wing controlled media
has been concentrating on one story, and it has nothing to do with Anna Nicole Smith. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has
just returned from a trip to the Middle East that included stops in Israel and Syria.

President Bush said, "Going to Syria sends mixed
signals, signals in the region and of course mixed signals to President Assad. And by that I mean photo opportunities and
or meetings with President Assad lead the Assad government to believe they are part of the mainstream of the international
community, when in fact they are a state sponsor of terror,"

White House spokesperson Dana Perino said,”
I do think that, as a general rule — and this would go for Speaker of the House Pelosi and this apparent trip that she
is going to be taking — that we don’t think it’s a good idea”

VP Dick Cheney said, Pelosi showed “Bad Behavior”.

And the Right Wing talking heads all followed suit
and mysteriously started spouting the same talking points at the same time.

Now for what the Bush Administration
is not saying:

Each and every one of the right wing talking heads
and those in the White House omitted several important details, because the facts of the matter just got in the way of their
harmonious message.

First, there were other Congressmen, Democrats and
a Republican who accompanied speaker Pelosi to the Middle East. The delegation included Reps. David Hobson (R-OH), Keith Ellison
(D-MN), Tom Lantos (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA), Louise Slaughter (D-NY), and Nick Rahall (D-WV).

Second, the week before Nancy showed “Bad
Behavior” by going to Syria, without the blessings of the White House or the State Department, three other Congressmen
went to Syria without the blessings of the White House or the State Department.

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA),
and Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA) were also in Israel and Syria just days before Speaker Pelosi’s visit.

These three congressmen strongly disagree with Bush
and his policy of No Diplomacy with Syria, and they don’t have a problem saying so.

Rep. Frank Wolf, (R-VA) said, "I don't care what
the administration says on this. You've got to do what you think is in the best interest of your country," Wolf went on to
say "I want us to be successful in Iraq. I want us to clamp down on Hezbollah."

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), said, "This is an area
where we would disagree with the administration, none of us in the Congress work for the president. We have to cast our own
votes and ultimately answer to our own constituents.”

So the all the noise was directed at Speaker Pelosi
because she is a Democrat, she is the Speaker of the House, and she is a woman.Bush
and his spin machine said absolutely nothing of the prior Republican delegation, their comments about the Bush administration,
or the other Congressmen who were with Pelosi on her trip.

I just thought you should know, what they purposely
did not want you to know, about Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her “Bad Behavior” in the Middle East.

The misdirection’s being used by the White
House spin machine that has everyone talking about Speaker Pelosi, currently has no one talking about the Scandals that have
become an everyday event in Washington.

Scooter Libby who helped leak the name of covert
CIA agent Valerie Plame, and who was found guilty of perjury and blocking an investigation. The FBI’s misuse of the
Patriot Act and gathering thousands of phone records of innocent American’s. GonzoGate, where the Attorney General of
the United States Alberto Gonzales, lied to congress about the firing of eight US Attorneys, and will be testifying under
oath before congress April 17, 2007.

So the White House did have this past week for their
Spin, but this week it will be business as usual…

I am guessing that many of you have had to make calls concerning
technical problems with your Personal Computer, or possibly with a service provider for some other electronic product you
own, and noticed that the person at the other end of the phone had an accent, similar to those from India…

And to help put you at ease, the person you would speak
to, would give you an American sounding name, but you new in the back of your mind that he or she was not an American…

I am also guessing that most have heard how American corporations
have out sourced their call centers to India and now even Africa…Well, it did not take our Government very long to follow
the leads of these corporations

When you call the Post Office with questions regarding
job openings via there 800 numbers, the call is directed to a call center in Kenya, Africa (That’s right, when you call
the United States Post Office about a job, someone in another country answers your questions)…I would not be surprised
to learn that other government agencies either have, or soon will, followed suit…

Our government is always looking out for the publics best
interest, they bring in foreign labor to do the jobs that Americans will not do…And they send jobs to other countries
that Americans will never have the chance to do…

The saying, “Only in America” just doesn’t
seem to have the same ring it use to…

The Pentagon has recently changed a rule on how our soldiers
who are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are handled.

Up until January of this year, all those that were killed
in action, were put in coffins loaded into the bellies of commercial airlines, were they were loaded and unloaded by baggage
handlers with forklifts, and not accorded the courtesy and dignity that those killed in the service of our country have always
been given.

The rules change requires that all those killed in action
be flown back to the United States on Military transports, and loaded and unloaded by military Honor Guards in White Gloves,
which has ALWAYS been the time honored traditions of the Armed Forces of the United States.

John Holley who’s son was killed by an IED in Iraq
in 2005, was informed that his son was being shipped back to him on a commercial flight, he objected, called his Congressmen,
Duncan Hunter (R-CA), who was the House Armed Services Committee Chairmen at the time, who then spoke to the pentagon.

But it took a Law passed by Congress last year, to force
the Pentagon to treat all who have died in action, with the Dignity that they and their families deserve.

I find it disgusting the way our Government has treated
those that have paid the Ultimate price to protect what we all take for granted…And I am still waiting for President
Bush to attend just one damn funeral of a soldier, who was sent to fight in a War, started by those who refused to fight in
a War…

And finally, Monica Goodling, Alberto Gonzales’s
senior counsel and the liaison between the White House and the Justice Department has resigned from her job.

This brings the total to three who have resigned from the
Justice Dept., Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’s former chief of Staff, and Michael Battle, former director of the Executive
Office of U.S. Attorneys, are the other two.

Also adding to problems with the Justice Dept., four top
deputies in the U.S. Attorneys office in Minnesota have also resigned in protest to U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose, who was
appointed about a year ago, after serving as an assistant to Gonzales.

A Lawyer speaking on condition of anonymity said, “The
situation in Minnesota will send shock waves through the rank and file.” He went on to say that ”The terrible
truth is, U.S. Attorney’s office are demoralized. The morale throughout the country is as low as it has ever been.”

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is expected to testify
on April 17, 2007 before Congress and under oath, where he will try to better explain the firing of the eight U.S. Attorneys
and to why he lied to Congress…

This week President Bush paid his first visit to
Walter Reed Hospital since the scandal broke. Bush admitted that mistakes were made. He did not say who is made the mistakes,
or who is responsible, but he did say mistakes were made…

But we now know that Bush and IAP Worldwide Services
are responsible for those rat infested living conditions our wounded troops were forced to live in…

I bring this up for a couple of reasons; first Bush
used the wounded soldiers for Photo Ops, which is wrong in so many ways. Yes, the President should visit the wounded troops
at hospitals, but he should leave the press outside, and second, Congress just approved “The Wounded Warriors Assistance
Act” (H.R.1538), by a vote of 426-0…

“The Wounded Warriors Assistance Act”,
establishes a hot line for medical patients to report problems with any treatments, and to cut through the red tape for when
they move from the Pentagons care to the Veterans Administrations care…

But the Bush administration has voiced concern over
one of the provisions that require imposing a one-year moratorium, on a program that lets private companies compete with public
agencies, for military and hospital work contracts…

This is the same practice that has created the situation
at Walter Reed Hospital with the privatization of support staff with IAP Worldwide Services, and Bush objects to the fact
that congress wants to put a moratorium on out sourcing…

The Bush administration said the program that has
been criticized for the substandard conditions at Walter Reed has generated billions in savings…

So while Bush is standing at Walter Reed Hospital
having his picture taken with true American Heroes and saying mistakes were made...at the very same time he is telling congress
that he objects to a moratorium to privatize support services such as the ones that created the rat infested conditions in
the first place at Walter Reed Hospital…

Some of the other conditions laid out in“The Wounded Warriors Assistance Act”:

Requires the
Pentagon to develop a plan to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder and other stress-related problems including substance
abuse conditions.

Requires the
VA to increase the number of physicians at hospital.

Requires that
appropriate members of Congress be notified of the hospitalization of a combat-wounded service member.

Assigns independent
health care professionals to serve as counselors and advocates for service members being considered by medical evaluation
boards.

Improves training
for health care professionals and medical care case managers on the particular conditions of a recovering service member.

Sets up a pilot
program in the Army similar to the Marine Wounded Warrior Regiment program, which keeps track of those still requiring medical
care on an outpatient basis.

As I mentioned “The Wounded Warriors Assistance
Act”: was passed by the House unanimously, 426-0, with nine members not voting. The bill must now be approved by the
Senate, which I am sure will have the same bipartisan support that it was given in the House.

If the Senate approves the Bill as it is currently
written, it would then go to President Bush for his signature.

Bush has been consistent with his support for the
troops:

He sent the
troops to War, with no Body Armor.

He sent the
troops to War with no Armor for Trucks or Humvees.

He has outsourced
logistical support.

He has outsourced
medical support.

He has slashed
Funding for the VA almost every year in office

He has proposed
VA cuts for 2009 and 2010 in his latest budget proposal.

He has extended
tours in Iraq and Afghanistan form 12 to 18 months.

He has stretched
the Armed forces to the Breaking Point.

He has politicized
the troops at every opportunity.

With support like his, who needs enemies…

The next time you hear Bush say he supports the
troops, remember, what he is really saying is that he supports the companies who are contracted to support the troops…

This past Friday the Iranian Navy seized fifteen British sailors and marines in the Persian Gulf, then on Saturday the
United Nations Security Council impose further sanctions against Iran, because of their pursuit to enrich uranium, which Iran
refuses to stop.

Iran has known for a couple of months, that further sanctions would be imposed upon them, since the first round of sanctions
did little to slow their pursuit to enrich uranium.

But, I have to wonder if Iran may have thought that by seizing the fifteen sailors and marines the United Nations Security
Council which Britain is part of, would either postpone or stop any further sanctions.

Iran has said that they have every right to pursue the enrichment of uranium, that they say will be used to generate electricity.
But most western governments fear that Iran's uranium enrichment program is not for power generation, but for making nuclear
weapons, a claim Iran denies.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Iran on Sunday, by saying that the fifteen sailors and marines that were seized,
was a "fundamental" problem for his government.

A "fundamental" problem seems like he is guarding his words a little to closely. I suppose that diplomats on both sides
are relaying messages in hopes of a political solution.

FARS News Agency reported that the fifteen sailors and marines have been moved to Tehran, and Iranian foreign ministry
officials said that the fifteen sailors and marines have confessed to being in Iranian waters, and that they would be put
on trial.

I have to explain a past confrontation to you that pertains to the current "fundamental" problem that Tony Blair's government
faces.

In June of 2004 Iran seized eight British sailors in the Persian Gulf, the Iranian government televised the eight sailors
were wearing blindfolds, confessing to be in Iranian waters, but before the eight confessed they were made to dig what they
believed to be their own graves, and then subjected to mock executions.

After airing the confessions and using psychological torture on them for three days, the Iranians released them.

So now you know how things ended up the first time, but now the War in Iraq is a lot worse, and Iran has been more brazen
in how they perceive their roll in the region

Blair said Iran's claim that the sailors and marines had crossed into Iranian waters "is simply not true" and hoped the
Iranians "understood how fundamental an issue this is for the British government."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who is in the Middle East, said the sailors and marines should be released right
away and "we all fully trust the British" that they were not in Iranian waters.

Evan after Blair's statement, the Iranians still say that the fifteen sailors and marines were in Iranian waters.

Britain and the United States have said the sailors and marines had just completed a search of a civilian vessel in the
Iraqi part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway when the Iranian navy intercepted them.

Both the British and the Iranians will not release the coordinates of the civilian vessel that was searched or exactly
where the Iranians seized the fifteen sailors and marines.

Gen. Ali Reza Afshar Iran's top military official, said on Saturday the fifteen sailors and marines seized were taken to
Tehran for questioning (torture) and that they confessed to what he called an "aggression into the Islamic Republic of Iran's
waters."

The capture and detention of the fifteen British sailors and marines, puts at risk an already strained relationship between
Iran and the West.

We all need to hope that the British, who have a great history of diplomacy, can work out a political solution, that does
not involve George W. Bush, since we all know how accomplished the Bush administration is, when it comes to diplomacy.

RANTS AND RAVESA White House Mired in ScandalsBy: David PhillipsMarch 19, 2007

The last five weeks have seen one scandal after another with ties directly to the White House, that has George W. Bush
wishing to hear more about Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears and Lisa Nowak the diaper astronaut, and less about Scooter Libby,
Valerie Plame, the FBI's misuse of the Patriot Act, and US Attorneys …

Fox News Channel is so worried about what to air and talk about that will not offend Bush and Cheney, that they are resorting
to filming and airing the Fox News Channel's division president, Roger Ailes and his speech's at dinners for bashing Democrats,
to fill time and space with his lame jokes…

I would not be surprised if Fox News Channel asked the Circus Freak of Politics, Ann Coulter, to call more people "Fags"
so they can fill more hours of her mindless dribble on their news/entertainment shows…

The White House is back to their old trick, of trying to scare people and make them fearful of their own shadows, so they'll
talk about something else and forget about the Scandals…

In case you missed it, late Friday, the FBI issued warnings to all Police Departments that Foreign Extremists here in the
United States, have been training to drive school buses…

The bulletin did NOT say how many foreign extremists, have sought to acquire licenses to drive school buses, or even where
in the United States they were doing this…

But, an FBI spokesman came forward and said, "PARENTS AND CHILDREN HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR."…

Did I mention that the FBI and Homeland Security said, "We have no information indicating these individuals are involved
in a terrorist plot against the homeland."…

So, the FBI has no information that extremists are doing this, but they just wanted you to know, so you would not be afraid…

I wonder if the FBI was aware of a new story this past weekend in the Washington Post, that was a follow up story about
the Department of Justice's, Inspector General report of Illegal use of the Patriot Act by the FBI…The follow up story
said, the FBI had obtained Thousands of Phone Records of American Citizens, over a two-year period, that had nothing to do
with terrorism…

I guess we won't be hearing President Bush say that he does not illegally wiretap American Citizens anymore, or that he
only wiretaps calls by suspected terrorists to the United States…

This past week Valerie Plame finally got to present the facts of her status with the CIA before Congress, and we now know,
that she was a Covert CIA agent, and CIA Director General Michael Hayden, confirmed that she was a Covert CIA agent…

We also now know as facts, that Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage,
ALL have their hands dirty, in exposing a Covert CIA agent as a reprisal, to discredit her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson,
and all three should be Charged with Treason…

President Bush said a couple of year's back, that if anyone from the White House is found to be the Leaker of the Agents
name, he would fire them…

Like that's ever going to happen…

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has created an on going scandal, because he was incapable of telling the truth, as to
why eight US Attorneys were fired…

His first response after being caught lying, was to fire (ask for his resignation) his Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson…Then
some e-mails came out from Harriet Miers, Bush's former White House counsel, and they tried to throw her under the bus, but
more e-mails showed up a couple days later, that implicated Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales before he was Attorney General…

This current scandal is still in its works, Congress has subpoenaed the fired US Attorneys, and Congress is considering
subpoenaing Rove and Gonzales…

The top four Republican candidates for the 2008 Presidential election in descending order are; Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani,
Senator John McCain, Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (who has not announced his candidacy), and former Governor of Massachusetts
Mitt Romney…

Rudy, John, and Newt have had a total of eight wives between them, and Mitt who is a Mormon, has just the one wife that
he is currently married too…

That's right, the Mormon has one wife and the other three have had a total of eight. I just find that ironic, and the fact
that the party of family values has given the least amount of support to the one who has family values…

Republican Irony, don't you just love it?

Newt Gingrich former Speaker of the House, went on a Christian talk radio show a couple of days ago, hosted by James Dobson,
who leads The Focus On the Family, a right wing evangelical organization. Newt confessed that while he was leading the charge
in 1998 to Impeach President Bill Clinton for having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, he was also having an affair, with one
of his congressional aides…

Some more irony, mixed with Hypocrisy from the Republican Party…

Scooter Libby was just found guilty on counts of perjury, lying to the FBI and obstructing an investigation. The Republican
Party has been pounding on Bush's door to pardon him…

Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC), who lead the charge for President Bill Clinton's Impeachment from the Senate, went on all
the cable news shows the other day, calling for Bush to Pardon Scooter Libby, when asked how Scooters guilty charges of perjury,
were different from President Clinton's guilty charges of perjury, his reply was "It just is"…Meaning that Scooter is
a Republican and Clinton was a Democrat…

Again more Hypocrisy from the Republican Party…

Well, I'm sure most of you have heard about the Walter Reed Medical Center scandal, that has rocked the White House, because
of the way President Bush was Supporting our Troops by having them live in Rat infested rooms and some forced to sleep in
their own Urine…Well Bush has formed a Bipartisan committee to look into the problem…It amazes me how Bush always
forms a committee when the shit hits the fan, instead of owning up to what really has caused the problems…

There are now Eight committees formed between the House, the Senate, and the President…More waste of time and tax
dollars…

Speaking of president Bush's Support for the troops, the House the other day said that Bush's request for another $100
Billion for his Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will have a few Billion diverted from the Wars to the VA because Bush is cutting
there budget for the years of 2008 and 2009…

Oh yeah, Bush said that if the House diverts money to the VA he would Veto the spending Bill…

Hypocrisy from the top, Bush says out of one side of his face, I Support our Troops, and out of the other side of his face
he slash's their Healthcare…

Lt. General David H. Petraeus, the new man that Bush has put in charge to oversee the War in Iraq said the other day that
a "Military win in Iraq is Unattainable."…

The General threw a Slap to the Face of Bush with this bit of reality…Will Bush spin this to his advantage by going
on the road and saying that things in Iraq are going good with his escalation and progress is being made or will he simply
ignore what the General said?

I'm guessing that we will see a Road Trip in the near future for Bush…

The Dept. of Justice's Inspector General for the FBI just released a report a couple of days ago, that said the agency
has abused the Patriot Act…FBI Director Robert Muller, said that he will put a stop to the abuse of the Patriot Act
by his agents, but would most likely not discipline anyone…

I guess we really can't blame Muller for not disciplining anyone, since Bush generally rewards those that screw up with
the Medal of Freedom like John Ashcroft, Tommy Franks and L. Paul Bremer…

In case you forgot who these three great thinkers are, Tommy Franks planed the invasion of Iraq; George Tenet said the
case for WMDs was a "slam-dunk," and Paul Bremer fired the Iraqi army, all government workers, and all factory workers leaving
everyone jobless and most armed….

You're doing a heck of a job Mullee…

I recently had a conversation with a young Republican regarding Bush removing many of our Civil Liberties, and he said
that Bush could remove all of our Civil Liberties if it meant keeping America Safe…

In case you have not heard, the Secretary of the Army, Francis J. Harvey has resigned because of the scandal surrounding
wounded soldiers being made to live in rat-infested buildings while they are being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

24 hours prior to Sect. Harvey's resignation, he fired Maj. Gen. George Weightman who was the head of Walter Reed Army
Medical Center.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Harvey had resigned. But senior defense officials speaking on condition of anonymity
said Gates had asked Harvey to leave.

"I am disappointed that some in the Army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation pertaining to
outpatient care at Walter Reed," Gates said in the Pentagon briefing room. He took no questions from reporters.

An internal memo released by House Democrats from Major General George Weightman's deputy to the Army's medical command
dated September 2006, explains how the Army's recent decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed had sparked mass
departures of "highly skilled and experienced personnel." And as a result, Weightman's deputy warned that Walter Reed's "...
base operations and patient care services are at risk of mission failure."

House Democrats who are investigating the conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center described how the Army awarded
the five-year, $120 million contract in January 2006. At that time, they claim Walter Reed had over 300 federal employees
in support services. By February 2007, a year later, that number had dropped to under 60.

The company that was awarded the $120 million contract is IAP Worldwide Services. The CEO of IAP, Al Neffgen, is a former
senior Halliburton official.

IAP World Services was also one of the companies who were given a contract by FEMA to deliver Ice to Katrina victims.

Congressman Henry Waxman says it would be "reprehensible if the deplorable conditions (at Walter Reed) were caused or aggravated
by an ideological commitment to privatize government services..."

While it appears that the Democrats were made aware of this scandal and were supposedly investigating, it was a reporter,
Dana Priest of the Washington Post who truly made the nation and our leaders take notice and to get off their rear-ends to
do something.

President George W. Bush said he is going to form a committee to look into how this happened, which really means that he
is going to slow things down until the story is no longer News.

You see we already know how this happened, IAP World Services was awarded a $120 million contract because of there CEO's
connection to Halliburton and Vice President Dick Cheney, and, the more employees and services that IAP World Services eliminated
at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the more money they would make.

When Bush says that he supports the American troops, while he is slashing the budget for the V.A., or sending troops into
battle without body armor, or awarding contracts to firms who only care about their bottom lines, maybe you will think twice,
when he says, that he supports the troops and some others don't.

Rat infestations, VA budget cuts, and no Body Armor are not what your average American would call supporting the troops…But
our President does…

RUDY'S SKELETONS COMING OUT OF THE CLOSETBy; David PhillipsFebruary 26, 2007

Like all Presidential candidates in the past, personal and professional histories are examined as if they are under a microscope.

And like most people, skeletons are bound to be hiding in their closets.

President Bush for example had to deal with his Whisky and Cocaine problems, and his missing time (AWOL) while serving
in the Texas Air National Guard. Senator John McCain had to deal with his involvement with the "Keating Five" savings and
loan scandal. Senator Barack Obama as a State senator in Illinois entered into a real estate deal with a political fundraiser
who was later indicted in a kickback scheme. Senator Hillary Clinton, who as first lady was confronted with scandals involving
the White House travel office, and the Whitewater real estate investment.

Some of the skeleton's that are rattling around Rudy's closet are former Monsignor Alan Placa a friend of Giuliani's, who
was defrocked by the Catholic Church amid accusations of groping a former student Richard Tollner.

Despite the accusations that Placa faced, Giuliani gave his friend a job at Giuliani Partners, a consulting company that
Giuliani formed after leaving office as Mayor.

Michael Hess a partner at the firm and the ex-mayors corporation counsel handled Placa's legal matters.

Another skeleton is Bernie Kerik; Giuliani promoted his former campaign driver from detective to a series of jobs, the
last being Police Commissioner, and later Kerik became one of the founding partners at Giuliani Partners.

Giuliani recommended Kerik to President Bush in 2004 to head the Homeland Security Department. Kerik had to decline the
offer, because of his guilty pleas to two misdemeanors of corruption, one of which he allowed a mob-tied firm to renovate
his apartment for no cost. Kerik paid a fine of $221,000.

And there are more skeletons that are busting out of Giuliani's closet, Russell Harding, who in 2000 at the age of 34 was
appointed the head of the New York City Housing Development Corp. Harding was given this position despite his lack of a college
degree or any expertise because he was the son of a key political ally.

Harding is currently serving five years in prison after pleading guilty for taking nearly a $500,000 in agency money to
pay for lavish meals and vacations, and for downloading child pornography. Two of his aides also pleaded guilty in defrauding
the agency of money.

Wait, were not done yet, there's still the rattle of bones emanating from Giuliani's closet. Those bones you hear are those
of Louis Carbonetti an old friend of Giuliani's who's father Anthony Carbonetti, was Chief of Staff at City Hall, while Giuliani
was Mayor, and is now a partner at Giuliani Partners.

Louis Carbonetti who was the Community Assistance Unit commissioner under Giuliani, pleaded guilty in 2004 to perjury in
a probe of contracts with a business improvement district he led after leaving City Hall. He was sentenced to five years probation
and paid a fine of $17,500.

All of these skeletons paint a very large and precise picture of Rudy Giuliani's hiring practices and his lack of business
ethics.

Many of those who Giuliani associated with in business, have either pleaded guilty to various corruption or larceny charges,
and are serving time or are tainted as immoral, as in the case of the former Monsignor Alan Placa.

Rudy Giuliani has gone through three divorces because of his adulterous affairs, and lack of moral conscience.

So I would like to ask those who voted for George W. Bush because of his family values and to those who thought that former
President Bill Clinton, was immoral because of his White House affairs…

Does Rudy Giuliani possess the Moral character that you want for your next President?

Do you hear the rattle of more bones, I thought you might…Coming soon Part 2

President Bush is currently sending in 21,500 more
troops to Iraq in hopes of stabilizing Baghdad.

This will be the third surge, as Bush likes to call
it that he has undertaken in the last several months, the last time being this past summer. During last summers surge, Bush
was promised help from Prime Minister al-Maliki who said he would add eight Iraqi Battalions to go with the surge of American
troops.

Well, only two of the eight Iraqi battalions we
are told showed up.

Bush’s latest escalation, I mean surge, again
calls for cooperation from al-Maliki and Iraqi forces working in concert with our American troops.

This time Bush said he has assurances from al-Maliki
that he will not interfere with American forces and that al-Maliki will go after both Sunni and Shia militias.

Al-Maliki is beholden to Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shia
Cleric who controls the Mahdi Army estimated to be approx. 60,000 strong according to the DOD, although they admit they really
are not sure of there strength.

The DOD and Bush have said the Iraqi security forces
are 325,000 strong. Bush has also said on many occasions in the past, although not recently that “When the Iraqis Stand
Up, We Will Stand Down.”

You may have noticed that Bush is no longer saying
“When they Stand Up, We Will Stand Down”, Bush has moved on from that bumper sticker slogan, to his next bumper
sticker slogan, ”The Surge to Control Baghdad”.

In case you may have forgotten some of his nifty
slogans, let me refresh your memory;

ØThey hate us for our Freedom’s

ØFreedom is on the March

ØYour either with us, or your against Us

ØBring um on

ØStay the Course

”When the Iraqi’s Stand Up, We will
Stand Down”, obviously that is just another bunch of crap from Bush and his spin machine to appease the American citizens.

Some of the things that we were told leading up
to the War in Iraq, that we have since learned to be False or out and out Lies are;

ØWe were told Iraq had WMD’s

ØWe were told that we would be greeted as liberators

ØWe were told that we would have our troops home by December 2003

ØWe were told the War would not cost us more than 1.5 Billion

ØWe were told that Iraqi Oil would pay for the reconstruction

ØThe Intel that Bush used to make his case for War was Cherry Picked

ØSaddam Hussein and Iraq had no connections with al-Qaida

Out of all the things that Bush has told us about
his War in Iraq that I find truly believable is, that it will be up to the next President to decide if, and when our troops
will come home.

The Democrats have now had control of Congress for
a little more than a month, and already we are hearing from the right wing spin machine that the Democrats have done nothing
to stop the War.

The right wing talking heads won’t tell you
that no matter what Democrats or even Republicans say, Bush is the Commander and Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States,
and he has the power to send in as many troops as he wants, no matter what others may say.

The only power that Congress has is Article one,
Section Seven of the Constitution of the United States, which says Congress can cut off funding to the Military.

While Congress does have this power, none have the
will, or backbone to use it, because any politician that votes to cut the funding will be labeled as someone who does not
support the troops.

Over the last several years the right wing spin
machine has labeled any politician or American citizen who has protested the War: as Unpatriotic, Un-American, Empowering
the Enemy or Endangering our Troops.

We’re told that it’s OK, and it’s
understandable that the people are against the War just keep it to yourself.

So when they Stand Up, and we DON’T Stand
Down, just remember that it’s OK and Understandable that you disagree with Bush, just keep it to yourself…

It's a shame that Anna Nicole Smith Died, but the Media has gone bonkers with all the coverage…

Anna Nicole Smith was Psycho crazy over Marilyn Monroe, years ago she said that, she wanted her life to emulate hers...

Marilyn Monroe loved Champaign and Pills and died at 36...Anna Nicole Smith loved Champaign and Pills and died at 39...

Smith said in a recent interview, that if she could go back and do things different, she would be a waitress and making
babies in a small town...

It's a disgrace that the vultures are circling Smiths body before it has a chance to run cold...

I can tell you that NASA and Astronaut Lisa Nowak are happy to be out of the News...

Because of Smith, we no longer have to endure hours and hours of mindless dribble, about a crazy Astronaut who drove to
Florida wearing diapers...It seemed that every talking head on TV, just loved to mention the diapers, and you could see a
half smile on their face when they said the word Diapers...

The down side for those who watch a lot of News coverage, is that you will now have to endure hours and hours of mindless
dribble, about Anna Nicole Smith, until the next non story for the media to cover, comes along…

New York, New York…I heard that Anna Nicole loved New York…

In 1993 the World Trade Center was attacked by al-Qaida, while Bill Clinton was President and Rudy Giuliani was the Mayor
of New York…

As Mayor of New York, Giuliani decided to move New York's Emergency Management Command Center, to one of the two, World
Trade Center Towers...

Was that a smart move on Giuliani's part to put the Emergency Management Command Center for New York, into a known al-Qaida
Target?

Since I have the opportunity to use hindsight, it is easy to state the obvious, but is this a legitimate question to ask
a Presidential candidate, as to why he put the Emergency Management Command Center into a known al-Qaida Target???

I heard on CNN the other day that the ONLY was for a follower of Islam to got to Heaven is to die a Martyr…That's
right, the Quran says I have 72 virgins waiting for you, but first, you must go and murder a non believer of Islam, and die
doing it, if you want your 72 Virgins…

Article one, section seven of the United States Constitution says that Congress has the Power to Cut funding to the Military…So
if Congress really wants to end the Iraqi War and bring our troops home they can do it…That is if they have the backbone
to do it…

And Finally…In today's News, Vice President Dick "Dead Eye" Cheney, DID NOT, I repeat, DID NOT, shoot another lawyer
in the face…

RANTS AND RAVES

The FDA is about to approve Cloned Meats and Milk,
they say that after a few years of testing, they find No difference between Farm Raised Beef and Cloned Beef…

While they have no long-term exposure test results
on Humans who eat and drink cloned foods, they say the risks are the same as with farm raised meats and milks…

Since they have no test results to back their claim,
buyers beware. Or should that be eaters beware…

President Bush is still intent on surging American
forces into Baghdad by 21,500 more troops…But what he did not say is that the number will be closer to 41,000 with the
support the forces will require to maintain that level…

Palestine is still teetering on Civil War between
Hamas factions and Fatah factions…Over 100 civilians have been killed, and many more wounded…

Hamas who was elected into power last year has vowed
to destroy Israel, and has said that it will never live side by side with Israel in Peace…

The so-called more moderate Fatah group wants Peace
with Israel, and is willing to work towards that end goal, with the two living side by side…

Ford Motor Co. and American Icon, announced losses
of $12.7 Billion dollars for 2006…The loss for 2006, surpassed Ford's old record of $7.39
billion set in 1992.

I wonder how many millions the CEO will get as a
severance bonus for breaking the old record???

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
a group of Scientists representing 113 countries have come together on a report that says Global Warming is real, and man
made…

An Oil lobbying firm has offered $10,000 to Scientists
who will write a report that rebuts the facts,

The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at American Enterprise Institute, who confirmed that the organization had approached
scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight
the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report." AEI has received
more than $1.6 million from Exxon-Mobil.

Exxon-Mobil just reported profits for the year 2006
came in at just under $40 billion for the past year…Our politicians keep telling us, that these record profits have
nothing to do with the price of gas at the pumps…Yeah right!!!!!

I wonder how many millions the CEO of Exxon-Mobil
will get as a bonus for the record setting profits????

The Department of Defense (The Pentagon), had changed
the number of wounded from Afghanistan and Iraq, from 47,657 to 31,493 on their web site…

They said that the NEW figure would reflect only
those that are wounded and then, medevaced by helicopter…

All others who are wounded or catch some illness,
and are medevaced by some other mode of transportation, other than a helicopter, no longer count as wounded or sick…

The DoD, ya gotta love them, making sure that the
American people don’t know the truth, making sure we feel good about the War……

Also any soldiers who are killed in action, then
rise from the dead will…

Bush Poking and Prodding Iran into WarBy: David PhillipsJanuary 29,2007

There is very little doubt in my mind that we will be at War with Iran, before the end of this summer.

In Bush's speech earlier this month about his surge (Escalation) of 21,500 troops to Iraq, he said that he is sending in
Patriot Missile Systems, and another Aircraft Carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf.

The various groups, that we are fighting in Iraq: the Insurgents, al-Qaeda and the Militia's, have No Missiles to shoot
down, that would require Patriot Missile Systems, but Iran does. They have No Jets, No Helicopters or other aerial devices,
that would require more Air Power, but Iran does.

Bush must go after the Iranian Nuclear facilities, which are spread throughout Iran, because he has backed himself into
a corner, with all of the lines he has drawn in the sand, regarding Iran's attempt to build a nuclear bomb, and Vowing to
never let that happen.

Less than 24 hours after Bush's speech about his surge (Escalation) of Troops to Iraq, the United States attacked the Iranian
Consulate in Irbil, Iraq, detained 6 Iranian civilians, and confiscated all the computers and paper work in the building.

A few hours later our Embassy in Athens, Greece was attacked, Greek authorities say they are not sure who attacked the
U.S. Embassy, but they are confident, that there was no link to al-Qaeda, or other foreign terror groups.

The Greek authorities might be right about no links to al-Qaeda, or other foreign terror groups, but they did say that
they don't know for sure, who was responsible for the attack on the U.S. Embassy.

For more than a year now, the U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of Iranian agents, and after three or four
days they would then release them. The DoD described this policy as "Catch and Release", because they did not want to increase
tensions with Iran.

President Bush and the DoD have rethought their policy with regards to Iran and Iranians who are caught in Iraq.

The new policy that was leaked to the press this past Friday by U.S. Counterterrorism officials, and authorized by President
Bush this last fall, now authorizes our troops to shoot to kill, or capture any Iranian agents or members of Iran's Revolutionary
Guard in Iraq.

Any Iranians captured in Iraq will be treated as enemy combatants, and will now be subjected to, as Dead Eye Dick calls
it, "Intense Interrogation", or as everyone else in the world calls it, "Torture."

The White House has authorized a widening of what is called the "Blue Game Matrix", according to counterterrorism officials,
and the DoD. The "Blue Game Matrix" is a list of approved operations that can be carried out against the Iranian backed Hezbollah
in Lebanon.

Iran has always claimed that their nuclear ambitions are peaceful, and they only want to build plants to make electricity.

Iran has announced plans to enrich uranium, which is the first step towards the process for making plutonium, which is
used to make nuclear bombs.

Israel, who has also said that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, does not have the firepower to attack
Iran's nuclear facilities that are spread throughout Iran.

While several members of the United Nations have also said that Iran must not be allowed to make nuclear weapons, and have
imposed sanctions on Iran, that are meant to curtail Iran's nuclear ambitions, most agree that the sanctions are weak, and
will do little to slow them down.

The United States plans to readdress the United Nations in hopes of toughening the sanctions. But countries such as Russia
and China have blocked sanctions in the past against Iran that have any actual muscle.

All of this is leading up to a military confrontation with IRAN.

Bush is poking and prodding, and just needs to provoke them...When Iran respond with a military reaction...Bush will attack...He
just needs an excuse that he can show the American people and the world, to justify his actions...

Hugo Chavez, the President of
Venezuela was sworn into his third term as President January 10th, which will run through 2012. Chavez said, “
All that is privatized, let it be nationalized, and that we are in an existential moment in Venezuela’s life, we are
heading towards Socialism and nothing or no one can prevent it.”

President Chavez is consolidating
his executive powers so he can to legislate by decree as part of his socialist revisions of Venezuela.

Venezuela’s legislature
is expected to rule this week on the Enabling Laws that would give Chavez 18 months to decree legislation.

In 2001 Chavez decreed a 40
laws that paved the way for a sweeping land reform initiative and higher oil taxes for companies.

Chavez said he would nationalize
all key industries such as Telecommunications, Electrical, Oil, and Banking industries.

Venezuela said that it would
end all further discussions with oil companies on how it would take majority control of it’s Oil industry.

Chavez said that BP, Exxon Mobil,
Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Total, and Statoil would be given the option to stay on as minority partners.

President Chavez also announced
a plan that would reconfigure municipal governments by replacing them with entities called ‘Communal Councils’,
which will be molded after The Paris Commune, the Socialist government that briefly ruled Paris in 1871.

Hugo Chavez has made a friend
and ally of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

Last week Iran’s President
Ahmadinejad paid a visit to Chavez, as well as two other socialist presidents in South America, Ecuador’s newly elected
leftist President Rafael Correa, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, the former guerilla leader who assumed the presidency
earlier this month.

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad
has alarmed Jewish organizations in Venezuela, because of his aggressive talk against Israel. Heinz Sonntag, a prominent Venezuelan
socialist and political commentator, said the visit by Ahmadinejad was an “affront and an eventual threat to our countrymen
who are Jewish.”

“The invitation of this
personality is the finishing touch on Chavez’s announcements this week.” Said Mr. Sonntag.

“There
is a desire by Chavez to accelerate what he views as a strategic alliance with Iran.” Said Alberto Garrido, author of
Chavez’s Wars, a book recently published here that explores Venezuela’s ties to the Middle East. “The Venezuelan
left has for decades considered alliances with Muslim countries as one of the ways to create a new civilization through the
toppling of American values.”

Venezuela said last month
that it would buy four oil tankers from Iran, part of Venezuela’s plan to increase its 21-ship tanker fleet through
the acquisition of 42 additional vessels. Chavez continues to support Iran’s work towards Uranium enrichment.

Iran and Venezuela, the world’s fourth- and fifth-largest
oil exporters, are also exploring for oil together in Venezuela’s Orinoco region. And they have plans for a joint oil
trading company, part of an ambition by Caracas and Tehran to price oil in euros instead of dollars in order to weaken the
influence of the United States in the international oil market.

With President Bush ignoring,
or at least not showing any desire for diplomacy with Venezuela, Iran's influence in South America will increase, and our
influence will decrease with Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and others in the region that look to emulate Castro's Cuba, and
embrace Iran's hate for America and Israel…

BUSH: SPEECH ABOUT NEW STRATEGYThe New "Stay The Course"By: David PhillipsJanuary
15, 2007

The New Way Forward

Bush's escalation of 21,500 more American soldiers does not appear to be what some on the right would call a Winning Strategy,
and it does not appear to be what some on the left would call an Exit Strategy. It is merely the same strategy of "Stay The
Course" with more American soldiers, and a promise from Iraq's Shia President Nouri Kamel al-Maliki, to bring in 50,000 more
Iraqi soldiers to try and squash the sectarian violence (Civil War Sunni against Shia) in Baghdad.

Bush has tried this same strategy on two other occasions, the last as recently as this past summer, also with a promise
from President al- Maliki to infuse more Iraqi troops, but the Iraqi troops that were promised never showed up.

President Al-Maliki who is a Shia and is backed in Iraq's fragile parliament by the cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi
Army. The Mahdi Army is made up of approx. 60,000 shiites, according to the DoD, but they admit they are not really sure how
many are in the Mahdi Army.

President al-Maliki has refused to go after Shiite militias, most notably Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. President al-Maliki
said that this time he would pursue both Sunni and Shia militias, and do whatever it takes to bring Baghdad under control
and to squash the sectarian violence (Civil War).

So, Bush's new strategy, which he has tried twice before, is to infuse more troops in Baghdad, both American and Iraqi,
put a stop to the sectarian violence (Civil War) that is tearing the country apart, while at the same time train more Iraqi's
to be soldiers. Oh yeah, and he plans on sending in 4,000 more American soldiers to the Anbar province, were al-Qaeda and
other foreign fighters are based and entrenched.

Bush said that if his new strategy works, he plans on handing over all control of Baghdad to the Iraqi's this November
2007, so Americans can be redeployed to border areas along Iran, and Syria, plus hopefully being able to bring some American
troops home.

Bush's new IRAQI Strategy: By sending more troops into Iraq, we can bring them home sooner, because the longer we're
there, the faster we can get out.

I know, your saying that this sounds absurd, well it should, because it is absurd…

I'll Have a Clone Burger with Fries to GoBy: David PhillipsJanuary 8, 2007

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), about a
week ago announced that the milk and meat from Cloned animals is safe to eat and drink. The FDA said that the milk and the
meat are “indistinguishable” from animals that are bred and raised in conventional methods.

The approval by the FDA moves the United States
one step closer to allowing the sale of Cloned animal meats and milk.

In 2001, the FDA put a voluntary suspension on the
sale of these items, so they could begin their study of the risks that may be associated with food from Cloned animals.

The FDA has made their findings public, and are
allowing a 90-day public comments period, after the 90-day period the sales of Cloned animal meats and milk could begin.

The preliminary findings by the FDA Center for Veterinary
Medicine will be published and made available this week, and states that none of their studies show, ”any remarkable
nutritionally or toxicologically important differences” in the meat and milk from Cloned animals.

The FDA is saying that a glass of milk and a hamburger
from a Cloned animal, will taste exactly the same as those from naturally bred animals, and that there are no differences.

But there are differences, big differences; a Clone
is created in a lab, to be an exact duplicate of an existing conventionally breed animal.

With cloning comes ethical concerns that are not
found in the conventional process of breeding. The process it self, has a very high risk of birth defects, and the mere fact
that it is created in a lab, would make many wonder if this is morally acceptable.

Many soon will be faced with a choice, do I want
to eat and drink products from Cloned animals, or just avoid them altogether because of ethical reasons, or some other personal
reason.

Well, the FDA has decided to make that decision
for you, they said, that there will be NO way of knowing if the milk or meat are from Cloned animals, or naturally bred animals,
because there will be no labels that say this is from a Cloned animal.

That’s right, the FDA says, that you the consumer,
will not have the option of knowing whether your meat and milk is from Cloned animals. The FDA said, that they have NO plans,
for the requirement of labels.

The FDA is saying that, if you, the consumer have
an ethical or moral problem with Clones, they don’t care.

As a consumer, I personally want to know what kind
of food I am putting in my mouth, and where it comes from, or at least I want the option of being able to know.

I think that there are millions of people that feel
that same as I do, and would also want to know, but the federal government is saying that our morals and ethics are not their
concerns, and what you don’t know, won’t hurt them.

I urge everyone who cares about what they eat, or
have an ethical or moral problem with Cloned milk and meats, to contact their elected officials, and tell them to have the
FDA require labels…

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